Gwen Stefani - The Sweet Escape

With her 2004 debut solo album Love Angel Music Baby, Gwen Stefani raised the bar for intelligent and top quality 21st Century pop music. Nelly Furtado matched it with Loose earlier this year, so how can Stefani follow it up? Originally her second album was supposed to be made up mostly of leftovers from LAMB, but instead of that, she has delivered mostly new material worked on around her pregnancy, and the result is that The Sweet Escape is actually a step up for her in terms of songwriting and production. It kicks off with the barmy first single Wind It Up, probably the only pop song ever to start with the yodel from The Sound Of Music's Lonely Goatherd before turning into an edgy and jerky Neptunes-produced track that isn't catchy enough to be the kind of smash hit single that What You Waiting For was, but is as delightfully insane as anything you'll hear on the radio this year (and that includes Knights Of Cydonia by Muse) so deserves praise for that. One song that does sound like a potential number one is the Akon-produced title track, which is probably the most infectious song Stefani has ever done, either on her own or with No Doubt. It also goes to show that, despite the evidence in the charts at the moment), Akon is a man with some talent when he wants to use it. Things take a real shift on Early Winter, which sounds like it could have come from No Doubt's Return Of Saturn album, and is co-written by Keane's Tim Rice-Oxley. It's a reflective ballad but still has the modern-sounding sheen on it to make sure that it doesn't stick out like a sore thumb alongside the other tracks. And that's important as it's followed by the Swizz Beatz-produced Now That You Got It, which is catchy as hell and has got a great insistent rhythm to it. Her bandmate and former boyfriend Tony Kanal helps out on a few tracks with co-writing and production duties, including Fluorescent and the impressive 4 In The Morning, which unsurprisingly sound like they could be No Doubt songs, but also the very edgy modern pop of Don't Get It Twisted. However, the most important contribution on The Sweet Escape is by The Neptunes, on the aforementioned Wind It Up, Breaking Up, Orange County Girl and U Started It, but mostly on Yummy. It's a Neptunes masterclass with guest vocals from Pharrell (obviously he throws a 'yessir' in there), jerky beats and bleeps and spunky vocals from Stefani before flying off the handle at the end with percussive effects that sound like filing cabinet draws being closed along with the whirring of electric drills and a spooky tune that builds up to an eerie cacophony that Tom Waits would be proud of. The way that Gwen Stefani energetically bounds from experimental tracks like that to the pure pop of The Sweet Escape and U Started It demonstrate just why her solo career has been such a revelation. She's apparently going back to her day-job when she's finished promoting this album, and you feel that the rest of No Doubt will have to pull off something spectacular with their next album to keep her from going solo full-time after producing two such great records on her own. And if none of it turns out right, she could always start a career as a professional yodeler. Now THAT would be a pretty sweet escape...

Mary J Blige - Reflections: A Retrospective

Mary J Blige is a busy lady at the moment. Late last year she released her latest studio album The Breakthrough, which has already sold more than 6 million copies worldwide as well as bringing her biggest UK single to date with the cover of U2's One (with U2, confusingly). There's also talk of a Mary J Blige and Friends album of duets, and now this greatest hits collection. Reflections: A Retrospective unusually starts with the two new songs, instead of tacking them on at the end, which is quite a bold move for a compilation, but works well here because both the title track and We Ride (I See The Future) are slick and classy slice of R'n'B, showing Blige on top form. She occupies a fairly unique position in modern music, equally adept at smooth and soulful ballads as well as uptempo hip-hop tracks, and Reflections contains plenty of hits from each side of her repertoire. There's some great tracks here, not least signature tune Family Affair and No More Drama, as well the duet with George Michael on that successful cover of Stevie Wonder's As. Obviously One is here as well, and it still sounds surprisingly good, considering what a disastrous idea it seemed to team Blige up with U2. It closes appropriately with MJB DA MVP, which is built around The Game's Hate It Or Love It, right down to 50 Cent's cameo appearance. It's an autobiographical track about her career, so fits in perfectly at the end of this impressive compilation.