POP MUSIC REVIEW : No Doubt Puts On a Lively Show

It was just a matter of time before new wave bubbled back into currency, and No Doubt is whipping it up with gusto. The Orange County quintet’s music is an amalgam of styles that draws on everything from Blondie to Madness, without ever delving too deeply into any one sound.

With its relentless superficiality and spotty songwriting, the group’s current album “Tragic Kingdom” threatens to fly apart at the seams, but at the Troubadour on Saturday (the second of three sold-out nights), the band’s colorful cartoonishness made it easier to overlook its shortcomings.

Singer Gwen Stefani is very much of the blonde bombshell persuasion a la Madonna, though she’s neither innovative nor outrageous. Vocally she seems to aspire to the oddball eclecticism of Lene Lovich or Nina Hagen, but lacking their pipes she ends up sounding more like Missing Persons’ Dale Bozzio.

Alternately perky and pouty, Stefani led her crew--including two horn players dressed as waiters who mugged shamelessly through the entire set--through almost an hour and a half of music. In addition to selections from their two albums, there were a couple of enthusiastic audience sing-alongs, an alphabet lesson and a brief interlude of Kool & the Gang’s “Celebration.”

Behind all the bells and whistles, there may not be a lot of substance to No Doubt, but it packs more entertainment value than your average “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers” adventure.