While there was certainly an artificial quality to "Love. Angel. Music. Baby" that lead to its high sales and successful singles, there was also an essence of brilliance to it, as it rode on Gwen Stefani's new height of stardom while pushing her music forward, past the new-wave confines of No Doubt. All of this hit a fever pitch at the start of 2006, so with another successful album in the books, and the birth of Gwen's first child, she's really at no rush to make another dance-pop push with her second album "The Sweet Escape". If the plainspoken title is indicative of anything, it's that while her debut solo album brought her to higher levels of success, there was also a certain taste of dissatisfaction with how it sought to fuse two jarringly different parts of her music persona. This time around, she decides to integrate all the elements of that album into a more coherent sound, more focused on hip-hop and R&B, rather than dance-pop.
This at first might seem like a drastic change, but it's odd, because while there are certainly more "Hollaback Girl" echoes here--the autobiographical "Orange Country Girl", the stuttering, irritating "Breakin Up"--"The Sweet Escape" is decidedly right in line with Gwen's passion for fashion and wallowing in the current club culture trends. Essentially, she just added a few more Neptunes productions, she beefed up the ballads, and she by and large ditches the dance-pop. The only track to manifest itself into a club banger is the album's best track, the closer "Wonderful Life". Produced by Tony Kanal, it recalls the high school sentimentality of "Cool", but also combines the new-wave comforts of "The Real Thing". This is not the album's only stunning moment, however: per the usual, every one of the ballads stand out as highlights, whether it be the other new-wave confection "4 in the Morning", or the comforting chill of "Early Winter". These are the songs that reaffirm Gwen's musicality, due in part to the fact that they were tailored for domesticity. When "The Sweet Escape" escapes to the streets, its anything but sweet. The album's worst track, "Now That You Got It", is a rhythm-heavy Swizz Beatz concoction that, much like "Breakin Up", just sounds to thin and repetitive to grate. Gwen slightly stumbles in the freakazoid sex song "Yummy", with she and Pharrell nonsensically rapping about tetris and their respective fashion lines, but she saves herself once again with her willingness to be weird, even if it means falling flat on her face. This is perhaps the only moment on "The Sweet Escape" that takes a sonic risk like those in "L.A.M.B", so you can't really hate it for attempting to re-create that aesthetic. Other than that, there's nothing else that really brings this record down: it still offers a solid collection of stylish and hooky songs, whether it be the ingratiating "Don't Get It Twisted" or the purest piece of Prince-styled pop, "Fluorescent", Gwen proves that she can pull the same trick twice. While nothing here hits like "Hollaback Girl" or "Rich Girl", "The Sweet Escape" is no doubt (no pun intended) a more consistent album, one that's not quite as embarrassing, but is still as fun and as sexy as anything she ever recorded in 2004.
Recommended Tracks in Bold:
1. Wind It Up 2. The Sweet Escape 3. Orange County Girl
4. Early Winter 5. Now That
You Got It 6. 4 in the Morning
7. Yummy 8. Fluorescent 9. Breakin
Up
10. Don’t Get It Twisted 11. U Started It 12. Wonderful
Life
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