NO DOUBT
Return of Saturn
pop (Interscope/Universal)
No Doubt has come a long way from its early days as a Southern California
ska outfit. Forget about early influences, including the Specials or current
ska outfit the Mighty Mighty Bosstones -- No Doubt's closest musical relatives
these days are such
acts as Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, and Jessica Simpson.
Sure, on the band's latest album, Return of Saturn, producer Glen Ballard (Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill) helps the group mask its teeny-bopper aspirations with lots of tempo-altering stops and starts, repetitious snare drums, chimes, and bells for dramatic effect, and other production tricks, but the band has clearly learned who its audience is after the success of "Just a Girl" and "Don't Speak."
The inane "Magic's in the Makeup" and the schmaltzy "Too Late," a "Don't Speak" retread, are two prime examples of the group's eagerness to please its youthful, female audience. Not coincidentally, they are two of the CD's worst selections.
When the band picks up the pace, the results are more tolerable, such as on the Jerry Harrison/No Doubt-produced "New" and the frenetic "Bathwater." Oddly though, many of the album's hooks are '80s rehashes, such as on "Simple Kind of Life," which sounds like the Pretenders' "Back on the Chain Gang" days, and "Six Feet Under," a song that will remind many of Missing Persons.
No Doubt
does play its own instruments, placing the group a cut above the current
glut of acts that concentrate more on choreography than musicianship.
But try as it might to mask itself in pink hair and fast-paced arrangements,
No Doubt is as close to being alternative as the members of 'NSync are
to being musicians.
April 10, 2000
