Gwen Stefani: The Sweet Escape : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Gwen, we need to talk. Goatherds are not hot. Yodeling about goatherds is not hot. Even an actual goatherd, after a hard day of chasing American Cashmeres around the mountain, has no desire to kick back and listen to a song about goatherds, even when it's yodeled by somebody as adorable as Gwen Stefani. Let's face it: Everybody dotes on Gwen, and everybody roots for her, unless they're some kind of brownshirt. Her first solo album, Love, Angel, Music, Baby, was extremely fun, brazenly New Wave and bubble-pop electric, an album that did everything right and was rewarded with one hit single after another. Gwen became America's teen queen, despite the fact that she was born in 1969. We all figured she was going to celebrate by taking some time off, nursing the spawn of Gavin Rossdale and wearing the most expensive designer shades on the playground.

The Sweet Escape is her hasty return, a mere two years later, sick of maternity leave and eager to get back in the club. Nobody could begrudge her that, right? But it's a fine line between hollaback-tacular and yodel-trocious, and Gwen crosses the line in "Wind It Up," which bites "The Lonely Goatherd" from The Sound of Music. The problem isn't the Swiss Miss motif so much as the fourth-rate Neptunes track and the Fergie-imitating vocal - it rips "My Humps" as blatantly as "London Bridge" ripped "Hollaback Girl." But why is Gwen imitating Fergie, when Fergie's whole steez was filling in for Gwen? And why is this song so tiresome? It's the sorriest thing to happen to the goatherd community since the Swiss cops cracked down on livestock-fondling. Unfortunately, it sets the tone for the whole album - she's doing the same thing she did last time, except it's not as much fun.

"Encore sophomore/Only one solo, I swore," she sings. "Oh, please, one more." But she hasn't had time to stash many good songs, and she sounds exhausted. In a dance track like "Yummy," she strains too hard to have mindless fun. Pharrell's raps are a drag - there's a grudging tone to his heavy-handed presence here, as if he's paid a flat fee for every "come on." The title tune has an interesting lyric about postpartum marital strife (Gavin, why won't you close the refrigerator door?), but it suffers from the duet vocals of Akon, in a botched attempt to get all smack-that-tabulous. It's not clear why a star as catchphrase-crazy as Gwen thought it was a rad idea to hook up with a guy who thinks "kick it like tae bo" is a big-money pickup line, but anyway, it doesn't work.

Gwen still comes off as endearing and unaffected, as in "Orange County Girl," where she recalls her Anaheim adolescence "selling makeup at the mall" and "making out to Purple Rain." "Wonderful Life" is easily the best and catchiest thing here, a Depeche Mode-style synth ballad about how much she misses her first boyfriend. The album could have used more moments like that. Sweet Escape won't squander all the good will Gwen built up with Love, Angel, Music, Baby. But she did all these tricks better the last time around.