Apparently No Doubt used to be ska. So, where the hell did it all go? As soon as MTV reared its ugly head following the success of ‘Don’t Speak’, the band decided to follow it with an album which is, to put it in plain and simple English, crap.
I don’t really like girl vocals in punk, but Gwen Stefani’s actually don’t bother me too much, and no, it isn’t because I fancy her. The bloke from Bush can have her as far as I’m concerned. Pink hair doesn’t really do it for me I’m afraid.
‘Spiderwebs’ is the best moment on this CD by far. As an opener things start very promisingly, but unfortunately this just lulls the listener into a very false sense of security. With elements of pop, punk and ska, tinged with a kind of reggae beat, it is the only thing that even gets close to the No Doubt of old.
‘Excuse Me Mr’ is punk-lite, palm-muted guitars and an angry Gwen vocal, but there’s no balls. ‘Just A Girl’ became a ‘girl-power’ anthem years before the Spice Girls invaded the Earth, and whilst it is ok, the effect of hearing this song on MTV every single freakin’ day has made it lose its appeal. It’s reasonably fast and furious without ever breaking into to much of a sweat.
But it all goes very pear-shaped from here. ‘Happy Now?’ is awful, ‘Different People’ sucks worse than a child with a dummy, and ‘Hey You’ sounds like nineties Nazi/hippy band Kula Shaker. Which is not a good thing. At six-and-a-half minutes, ‘The Climb‘ is the most boring, laughable piece of music I’ve heard in a long, long time. It begins like a bleeding Lionel Ritchie song or something!
‘Sixteen’ at least has the amps turned up on the guitars if nothing else, and, wait for it, there’s a bit of ska. ‘Sunday Morning’ starts reasonably promising, but then merges into another pile of steaming shit. ‘Don’t Speak,’ which was everybody’s mum’s favourite song of 1995, is a good song if you like that sort of thing, but screams “SELL OUT!” After just five seconds of ‘You Can Do It’ I’m ready to smash my stereo into oblivion. I cannot explain how bad this song actually is.
‘Tragic Kingdom’ is what it says. Tragic. It’s pop and it’s crap. Only ‘Spiderwebs’ manages to salvage the one mark. Don’t waste any of your precious pennies on this.
Paul Savage