Gwen Stefani, 54, and the guys − Tony Kanal, Adrian Young, Tom Dumont, Stephen Bradley and Garbial McNair − put on a show that could have been plucked out of someone’s garage back in Anaheim in the late 1980s. The sound, the look, the vibe, it all felt familiar.
High-spirited, energetic and oozing SoCal, No Doubt took their die-hard fans back to the mid-1990s, playing all their biggest hits from their seminal album “Tragic Kingdom,” some bangers from the early 2000s and a deep cut with the help of one of music’s current biggest stars.
Midway through the set, the crowd screeched as none other than Olivia Rodrigo hit the stage in an I Heart ND shirt. She joined Stefani for a back-and-forth rendition of No Doubt’s “Bathwater,” a song about always choosing the wrong man.
Rodrigo only was on stage for that one song, and the rest of the night was a No Doubt hit parade. Not many bands can close with a trio of jams from the same album like “Just a Girl,” “Don’t Speak” and “Spiderwebs,” but No Doubt can.
Stefani had fun with “Just a Girl,” at one point asking for only the men in the crowd to sing it with her. The deep voices that rumbled back could only make her smile. She then did a girls’ only call and response and the overflowing Coachella Stage crowd roared back twice as loud with classic lyrics that Stefani described as “more relevant now than ever.”
Her stage work can only be described as aerobic, as she bounded around the main stage infrastructure all night, running and jumping on platforms out among the crowd, climbing scaffolding to precarious heights and even doing push-ups before “Just a Girl.”
When that raucous song ended, the stage went dark and Dumont strummed the first three notes of “Don’t Speak” and the crowd knew things were about to get emotional − and they did. Stefani belted out her hauntingly beautiful song about her breakup with Kanal, while the two shared the stage together.
Then the energy was brought right back up to close with “Spiderwebs,” probably the ska-punk band’s signature jam.
Aside from the three closers, they also played “Different People,” “Sunday Morning” and “Happy Now?” from their “Tragic Kingdom” album. And they squeezed a few other big hits into their 16-song set, including “Hella Good” and “Hey Baby.”
Before Saturday, the last time No Doubt performed together was in 2015. Stefani, as we know, has had a bunch of success as a solo artist and has garnered new fans in recent years as one of the stars of “The Voice.”
But this was a No Doubt night, not a Gwen Stefani night, and as she and her five bandmates gathered arm-in-arm for one final bow at the end of the set, you could tell it was as meaningful to them as it was to the crowd.
