Boston Globe (March 24th 2000)

Back on track No Doubt overcomes self-doubt with strong follow-up to hit album

The public sheds no tears for a successful band trying to follow up a top-selling album. Oh, are we supposed to feel sorry for them? From the band's point of view, though, it can be a daunting task to grab the brass ring again. Writer's block can creep in. So can self- doubt, which the ironically named No Doubt has fought ever since it began more than a decade ago.

"It's really been interesting this time around because we've never been in this position of having expectations," says No Doubt singer Gwen Stefani. "We did a press conference in New York and 50 people flew in from all over to listen to our record and ask us questions. It still blows my mind that people care."

No Doubt jumped from obscure club act to amphitheater headliner with its last album, "Tragic Kingdom," which sold 6 million copies and spun off three Top 10 hits in "Don't Speak," "Just a Girl," and "Spiderwebs." It also made a star of the videogenic Stefani, though it didn't make writing the new album, "Return From Saturn," any easier.

The new disc - an exciting progression that takes the band's basic ska-rock sound and expands it in many directions - comes out April 11. It's preceded by a get-reacquainted tour that stops at Avalon on Wednesday. (All proceeds are going to charity, and a larger tour will follow this summer.)

The album climaxes two years of false starts and a switch in producers. The low point came when No Doubt was in Stefani's home in the Hollywood Hills, stumped for ideas, while having to listen to the Red Hot Chili Peppers - their onetime LA club idols - perform reams of new music up the street, where Flea, the bassist for Chili Peppers, lives.

"As we were trying to write at Gwen's house, we could hear them in their garage just bashing out all these new jams every afternoon for a whole week," says No Doubt guitarist Tom Dumont. "We just felt so inadequate. We couldn't write anything and there they were, jamming and having fun."

But No Doubt got its act together, helped by a shift in producers from Matthew Wilder (who did "Tragic Kingdom") to Glen Ballard, who is best known for Alanis Morissette's "Jagged Little Pill."

"Glen was pretty much meant to be," says Stefani. "It was weird, because we had been working on the album for about a year before we met him. We just really needed to find the right person, and he was recommended. He didn't seem like the obvious choice to us, but we had meetings with five different producers one day and he was one of them. We all walked out saying, `That's the guy.' He's just a really amazing person, a real kind of peaceful personality. He's inspiring and hard-working. He pretty much brought all our confidence back and helped us sort through the songs we had at that point. We couldn't tell which ones were good and bad, you know? But he helped pick the ones that stood out."

Wilder, the band's former producer, had started working on the new record, but "first of all, we didn't have the songs," says Stefani. "And second of all, I think we were just too comfortable with Matthew. We needed to get outside our comfort zone and kind of push ourselves a little bit. Sometimes you need to do something different to get something different."

The difference is more depth in musical and lyrical content, from the subtly sarcastic first single, "Ex-Girlfriend" (with Stefani singing, "You know it makes me sick to know I'm on that list, but I should have thought of that before we kissed") to high-quality rock, ska-rock, and funk, plus more love ballads than before. One ballad, "Too Late," has the playfully possessive line, "I just want to take you from everyone and keep you stashed."

The album rocks enough to hold the interest of the teen audience that craved the band last time but is also thought-provoking enough to entice more adult fans. And Stefani, who writes most of the lyrics, has kept her inimitable wit in songs like "Artificial Sweetener" and "Magic's in the Makeup."

"In No Doubt's past, before `Tragic Kingdom,' even maybe during `Tragic Kingdom,' it was all about energy and having a really pumped- up sound so people would get off on us live," says Dumont. "It was almost the energy of punk with more of a melodic approach. This time, the idea was not just trying to get things upbeat and in your face, but to use a little more dynamics and worry less about the tempo and more about what the lyrics were saying and how we could best bring out their emotional content.

"I know for Gwen, between recording `Tragic Kingdom' and this record, she learned a lot," Dumont adds. "Instead of singing on 10 the whole time, she was able to have a lot more subtlety."

Stefani shines most on "Simple Kind of Life," the first tune she has written entirely by herself. "All I ever wanted was a simple man . . . all I ever wanted was a simple life," sings Stefani, who in real life has been dating heartthrob singer Gavin Rossdale of the band Bush.

As for the new album title, that's Stefani's idea as well. She just turned 30 and was looking for a way to embrace that age rather than run from it.

Astronomers say it takes Saturn 29 years to circle the sun, she explains. "So from the time you're born to the time it returns is a time where you go through a confusion and you second-guess everything in your life and clear away things that are holding you back . . . I feel a lot clearer now. It's such a huge accomplishment for us to be able to write this record and feel we have grown this much. It's like the peak of our ongoing dream."