Pitchfork

Is there another mainstream pop star who flits between lights-on likeability and pouty-lipped empty vesseldom as dramatically or frequently as Gwen Stefani? In the three years since abandoning the MTV rock ghetto she inhabited with No Doubt, and her subsequent self-reinvention as a certifiable pop celeb and fashionplate mogul, she's been doing wind sprints between these two incompatible personae. Nonetheless, since going solo with 2004's patchy but single-rich Love.Angel.Music.Baby., Stefani's remained above the fray of the ongoing clusterfuck between commerce and art-- and she's done it by brand-building in both the abstract sense (via her quest for pop cultural memes) and in the more traditional sense (with her clothing line L.A.M.B. scoring bonus cross-promotional hits with every in-song mention).

Of course, Stefani also deserves credit for her gutsy musical choices. The spazzy, overcaffeinated electro of past singles like "What You Waiting For?" and the sparse drumline squibbles of "Hollaback Girl" suggest she's not content to merely rack up hits; she also wants her game to be the freshest around. That's a desirable instinct in a pop star, and despite her predilection for hijacking what feels like every single empty space on The Sweet Escape to play her own hypegirl ("How sick is this?" she beams in the intro to "Breakin' Up", minutes before declaring "Don't Get It Twisted" "the most craziest shit ever"), her single-minded interest in smuggling the weirdest sounds onto TRL results in some of The Sweet Escape's finest moments.

Case in point: Lead single "Wind It Up", which wraps a "Lonely Goatherd" yodel sample from Stefani's beloved The Sound of Music around a wriggly Neptunes beat. As mainstream singles go, it's an absurd-sounding concoction that skates perilously close to the edge of utter ridiculousness, but something about the sheer nerviness of the idea ultimately sees it through. If I had to guess at a single from this year that eventually ingratiated itself to the highest number of first-time haters, this would probably be it, and in Stefani's world, that's like the Holy Grail. Unlike most pop singers, Stefani aims to win you over with oddity. (There's a reason Alice in Wonderland was her last album's most recurrant theme.)

It's a high-risk, high-reward strategy, but most of The Sweet Escape's other gonzo pop songs yield some degree of payout. "Now That You Got It" surfs on a loping hip-hop beat and a staccato piano sample while Stefani splits wailing time with a chorus of alarms. The Neptunes-produced "Yummy" earns Best Song status by moving from a skeletal rhythmic backbone and resounding "Milkshake"-pinching triangle hit into a spiralling melody line that sounds like a Sherman Brothers outtake. Also, "Don't Get It Twisted" sounds like reggaeton-polka.

Thing is, it takes real time to wring genius out of the obscure and unseemly, and time is not a luxury that Stefani the entrepreneur affords herself. As such, most of The Sweet Escape's problems arise as a result of her schedule-dicated slog back towards middle ground. With the exception of the spazzy, Akon-produced doo-wop track "The Sweet Escape" and the Keane-penned "Early Winter"-- which proves that Stefani still has the ability to elevate an otherwise ordinary rock song to another level-- everything else here has the vague whiff of tossed-off album fattener. The unofficial sequel to "What You Waiting For?", "Orange County Girl" boasts another self-writing lyric ("Don't know what I'm doing back in the studio/ Getting greedy cause he said he had another sick flow/ So I had to hollaback cause I didn't get enough/ Still feel the Wonderland, Alice and the tick tock") that, in a Charle Kaufman-aping stylee, mistakes meta for content. Elsewhere, "4 in the Morning" and "U Started It" exhume the ghosts of S Club and Debbie Gibson respectively, in turn destroying the mallpop cred that Stefani accrued with L.A.M.B.'s impeccable "Cool".

By now you get the point. One step forward, three steps sideways, one step back, The Sweet Escape continues in Stefani's proud tradition of being caught somewhere between the vanguard and the insipid. Considering this is the same person who once rolled out "Hollaback Girl" and the Harajuku girls in one fell swoop, it's not the least bit surprising, but the pockets of brilliance here are compelling enough to warrant holding out hope that Stefani's best as a boundary-pushing pop singer still lies ahead.