Gwen Stefani desired to get this straight.
“You confirmed up to Coachella, Saturday evening 2024,” she asked, “to see No Question play collectively on this phase for the 1st time in 9 yrs?” Dressed in a shredded plaid outfit, her blond hair twisted into a pair of knots atop her head, the 54-12 months-aged frontwoman was addressing the gigantic crowd gathered just before the festival’s principal stage for just that function.
“Are you mad?”
That was just one way to explain why No Question — the beloved ska-punk band from Anaheim that exploded with 1995’s “Tragic Kingdom,” building Stefani a major pop star, prior to at some point drifting aside in 2015 — experienced returned to such a hero’s welcome at Coachella, where by the team was billed in a type of sub-headlining slot occupied in new several years by Calvin Harris and Swedish Residence Mafia.
Nonetheless Stefani and her bandmates weren’t the only ’90s-rock veterans at the pageant this year: Just prior to No Doubt on Saturday arrived performances by Blur and by a new edition of Chic featuring the son of the late Bradley Nowell, who died in 1996 just as the Long Seaside band was about to join No Question in the big leagues. Basic KROQ-period alternative rock, it looks, is all the rage once more — not simply thanks to reunited OGs but amongst guitar-wielding young stars like Billie Eilish and Olivia Rodrigo, the latter of whom joined No Doubt at Coachella (dressed in a No Question T-shirt, no much less) to sing the jaunty “Bathwater.”
Listed here Stefani demonstrated how tightly she’s maintained her grip on her are living-wire stage presence in spite of the actuality that she’s invested substantially of the previous decade doing gentle-focus Television set (as a choose on “The Voice”) and seeking her hand at gentle-aim region music (with her partner, the Nashville star Blake Shelton). She skanked, she jump-kicked, she did thrust-ups she climbed a lights rig to perform the crowd in singing a several traces of No Doubt’s strike “Just a Girl.” Her vocals were powerful through the exhibit, with minor in the way of apparent backing tracks repertoire-intelligent, the band caught to the classics — “Hella Great,” “Ex-Girlfriend,” “Underneath It All,” “Spiderwebs” — and attained back for the thrashing “Total Hate ’95” (originally a duet with Sublime’s Nowell) and for a protect of Madness’ “One Move Beyond.”
No Question performs at Coachella on Saturday.
(Christina House/Los Angeles Situations)
Emotionally, Stefani was probably a bit less in touch with her materials than you might’ve desired. “Simple Sort of Lifetime,” which she wrote about her dreams for her romance with her very first partner, rocker Gavin Rossdale, experienced small of the yearning she tapped into on 2000’s “Return of Saturn”. At the pageant, it sounded almost like a taunt, as however she were making exciting of her more youthful, extra vulnerable self.
But she observed her way deep into the drama of No Doubt’s greatest tune, the deathless electricity ballad “Don’t Speak,” which depicts her extensive-back separation with the band’s bassist, Tony Kanal. As she sang it Saturday, cameras fed excessive closeups of her deal with to the massive video clip screens flanking the stage, and you felt as although you could see all those people aged memories flooding into her thoughts.
