As no Doubt get bigger, the age group of their audience seems to shrink, and when the band from Anaheim, California came to the Point on Monday night, they were greeted by the screams of thousands of Irish teens and pre-teens. The focus of all this hormonal activity is singer Gwen Stefani, a blonde, aerobic dynamo with a passion for the UK ska sounds of Madness, The Specials and The Selecter.
There's nothing subversive about No Doubt's music, a mixture of pop, post-grunge, and ska nostalgia, and as the band bounce through tunes from their current album, Tragic Kingdom, they reveal little of any substance beneath the skanking.
The stage set looks like an orange grove, complete with big inflatable citrus fruits - not quite U2's lemon, but a good advert for Anaheim's main export. The sunny props contrast with the fogginess of the sound, and sometimes it's hard to hear Stefani's vocals and Tom Dumont's guitar above the dubby bass of Tony Kanal and the thudding drums of Adrian Young. The band is augmented by Phil Jordan and Gabe McNair on trumpet and trombone, but what really grabs the attention is the pair's hi-energy legwork during the livelier numbers.
Gwen does all the usual crowd-pleasing cliches, such as getting the boys in the audience to sing Just A Girl, and claiming Irish ancestry for nearly everybody in the band.
