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Gwen Stefani’s third studio album is a blissful return to the Hollaback girl of our mid-’90s dreams

by matt Scanlon

It’s going to alarm fellow Gen-Xers (even the youngish ones in your hardworking edit office) that Gwen Stefani will turn 47 years old on October third. Yes, the same once-sixpacked, bottle-blonde Hollaback/Riot grrrl/Barbie hybrid is within spitting distance of her first AARP “see you soon!” letter-opening. And those of us who relished, like her it seems, a certain teenager-forever sensibility will have to uncomfortably juxtapose that with a newfound arthritis-forever reality.

Still, if the Fullerton, California native’s (and lead singer of No Doubt) third solo studio album is any indication, youth may actually spring eternal—at least on vinyl.

After ten years of parenting her kids Kingston, Zuma Nesta Rock, and Apollo Bowie Flynn (with Gavin Rossdale, with whom she split last year)…oh, and building a now-thirteen year-old L.A.M.B. fashion line that produces yearly revenue of $90 million—it would seem logical that there’d be little time left for music. While not technically true (Love. Angel. Music. Baby. and The Sweet Escape were solo album releases over that time), it’d be lying to say a great many fans of the grittier Gwen weren’t bemused by the plasticized…simonized version that appeared after her initial break with No Doubt in 2003, complete with slick and often marrowless pop tunes (can we ever really forgive The Sweet Escape’s “Wind it Up”’s lack of melody, ridiculous yodeling, and crass L.A.M.B. buzz marketing?). As Lindsay Zoladz summed it up it in a piece for Vulture.com: “The girl who’d once made awkwardness and cheekiness seem so glamorous was, suddenly, telegraphing the opposite message: sand down your rough edges, and they’ll like you even more!”

This year, however, brings This Is What the Truth Feels Like, kicked off more or less last October at a one-night concert at the Hammerstein Ballroom, where she performed the disc’s sixth track, “Used to Love You” (rumored to be about her breakup with Rossdale). Gritty, honest, and catchy, the tune piqued interest in the March 18-released album…and it wasn’t a mirage. Stefani has seemingly once again embraced both exuberance and clever messaging, as the new work dives from the remorseful-yet-strangely-jaunty “Misery” to the vintage No Doubt-esque “Make Me Like You,” and she has said that some of the unexpectedness of the new songs stems from fresh happiness with current beau Blake Shelton.

In tandem with a new No Doubt album, also scheduled for summer release, it seems we have, briefly, been restored to a time when hangovers and heartthrobs were all we had to croon about.

BK WINDOW SPREAD