No Doubt – Push And Shove Saved My Life… Probably

Gwen was created by a group of harajuku girls chanting around a blow up sex doll

Gwen is an immortal goddess that never ages, that is for certain. And what’s more, she continues to rock out more effortlessly than any other aging songtress I can think of (Madonna). I just had to say that because I think she needs to hear it as much possible so the pressure to keep that way is always so tight that she’ll never disappoint us by ageing/dying.

Embarking on her solo career was probably utterly instrumental to the release of Settle Down, even though it’s been six years since Gwen’s last album The Sweet Escape and almost a thousand years (eleven) since No Doubt released Rock Steady, which was the soundtrack to a super weird time in my life.

Push And Shove is really the love child of No Doubt and Gwen Steffani’s solo career persona (a sex doll brought to life my chanting harajuku girls). In the album’s cooking pot you have some awesome ska tracks (Push And Shove) with a few dreamy ballads (Dreaming The Same Dream), mix in some catchy 80s nostalgia (One More Summer), add a pinch of a potential club hit (Looking Hot) and what you have is damn good comeback cookies that can hold its own against the band’s earlier baked goods. (I went for a baking theme and I will damned well see it through.)

To clarify: when I say that Gwen’s solo career was instrumental to the album’s creation, I mean that had Gwen not gone down the solo career road, No Doubt would not have released Push And Shove, and the world would have suffered.

How do I know this? Do I have some sort of alternate dimension machine that allows me to travel to other universes where I discovered a world where What You Waiting For? never existed and as a result Gwen didn’t rebirth her own appetite for creating music, so No Doubt didn’t get back together, this album didn’t exist and I never used Push And Shove as music-inspiration to totally blast my biceps while working out, giving me the extra confidence to ask out the guy I’ve been secretly following home from work and therefore fall into a pit of depression and end up killing myself with eighty bottles of aspirin while having a foamy seizure to the lulling sighs of Don’t Speak?

No. It’s just a hunch.

What is certain, however, is that I didn’t know how much I needed them to make this album until I realised that it’s now autumn and we’re all verging on the brink of plunging into SAD. Gwen and the boys have saved us all from an autumn of taking shit too seriously. Thank you Gwen, I love you. Sorry I’ve been taking too much Xanax and have had to construct a “safe zone” under my desk.

I’m going to break the album down for ya’ll pro and con style to make digestion easy.

Pro – Settle Down: This song is the epitome of No Doubt’s style and their deep roots in ska. As well as their first single off the new album it also reminded me that I’m painfully single and need to settle down.

Pro – Looking Hot: Solo Stefani plus playfully feminine vocals that hark back to their super early stuff like Trapped In A Box make this track a fav. Play as you’re doing coke ready for a night out.

Pro – Stefani singing “stare at my ragamuffin”.

Con – Sparkle: With a bass that resembles the Strangler’s Peaches to set up an ultimately anti-climax of a chorus, this track doesn’t deliver what I want from it. I play it up until the chorus, then I turn it off.

Pro – One More Summer: Even catchier than an Essex lad with STIs.

Con – Undone: To me this track is filler. Not just filler, but boring filler. If the album were a sandwich, then this track would be spam.

Pro – Push And Shove: Totally deserving of the album title. Major Lazer adds some serious weight to the entire album by featuring on this track. No Doubt at their very best, mixing ska, pop and rock in a perfect chocolate-chipped blend that raises my serotonin levels enough to rock out even though summer is dead.

Pro – That we live in this version of reality where the album exists and I haven’t aspirined myself to death.