It’s exactly two years since she shed her ska-punk skin with debut solo album ‘Love Angel Music Baby’, which established Stefani as a serious contender via a mix of poppy R&B, hip hop, electro, soul balladry and oddball kitsch. With ‘The Sweet Escape’, her place in the R&B-pop diva stratosphere is now assured.
Basically, it offers more of the same, and producers Neptunes, Linda Perry and Nellee Hooper are back, but Pharrell and Swiss Beatz make the album’s best moments sound almost aggressively contemporary. Lead single ‘Wind It Up’ is the requisite novelty number – it riffs on ‘The Lonely Goatherd’ just as ‘L. A. M. B’s ‘Rich Girl’ did on ‘If I Were A Rich Man’. The title track is terrific (imagine Jacko fronting The Chiffons), as is ‘Yummy’, a Kelis-like blend of syncopated beats and show tune strings that even Pharrell’s lacklustre rap can’t ruin. Far less appealing are ‘Fluorescent’ and ‘4 In The Morning’ (‘True Blue’-era Madonna) and the dated synth-rock of ‘Wonderful Life’ (cheers, Linda Perry). Keane’s Tim Rice-Oxley contributes ‘Early Winter’, a chugging, indie-rock ballad that will doubtless be huge. Stefani’s in the business of making bucks, not bucking trends – the LP’s brazen product placements make that plain – but Beyoncé and Christina will have to make room for her, whether they like it or not.
