Exactly 20 years ago, the Pixies reunited on the main stage of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, and their set was so rapturously received that it not only went down in history as one of the greatest Coachella moments of all time and started a whole new career chapter for that band, but it opened the door to other '90s-centric Coachella reunions by the likes of Outkast, Rage Against the Machine, the Replacements, Pulp, My Bloody Valentine, the Verve, Refused, Stone Roses, and Mazzy Star.
But after this year's much-hyped comeback by one of the biggest acts of the 1990s, No Doubt, we have a new contender for the best Coachella reunion of all time. The Orange County icons' 80-minute, 16-song, Olivia Rodrigo-assisted Saturday set — their first public performance since 2015 — was an absolute triumph, surpassing the already-high expectations of fans and seemingly even the elated band members themselves. And, as was the case with several of the reunions mentioned above, it absolutely should not be a one-off.
To be perfectly honest, I'd expected this performance to seem, like so many band reunions in general (Mötley Crüe, I'm looking at you), to come across as an emotionless cash-grab. I'd even expected frontwoman Gwen Stefani — who seems happily settled in her new simple kind of life as an Oklahoma-dwelling, country-music-adjacent pop star, and puzzlingly didn't even thank No Doubt when she received her Hollywood Walk of Fame star last year — to barely interact onstage with her on/off ND bandmates. But the instant that she, bassist Tony Kanal, guitarist Tom DuMont, and drummer Adrian Young stormed out to the electro-rock partystarter "Hella Good" in matching mixed plaids, with grainy home-movie footage of their scrappy Anaheim days playing on the video screens behind them, it was clear that they were a newly energized, unified front.
Stefani seemed like her old punk/pop self in her bindis and bantu knots (cultural appropriation be damned), swearing up a storm as she bantered with her bandmates and the audience and promised to "dust off some of the old s---" and "slap the f--- out of you tonight!" And the old s--- definitely slapped, with the clearly well-rehearsed band remaining rocksteady and the spunky Stefani never sounding better, reminding the multi-generational audience that this voice-of-a-generation (and occasional The Voice coach) literally possesses one of the most distinctive singing voices of all time.
Stefani also repeatedly expressed her giddy disbelief that thousands of Coachella-goers actually showed up to see her teenhood garage band in the year 2024. "Is this actually happening right now?" she gasped at one point, and towards the end of the evening, after surprisingly sweetly slow-dancing with her ex/Tragic Kingdom inspiration Kanal during the breakup ballad "Don't Speak," she grasped her microphone, steadied herself, and gazed out into the field, taking it all in as the video-screen cameras closed in on her awestruck, grateful expression. Chills ensued.
One of the many other highlights of No Doubt's perfectly curated, hits-packed, no-filler set was avowed fangirl Rodrigo, who's been known to cover No Doubt's "Just a Girl" live (and, as Stefani snarkily quipped, has also been known to write songs about "stupid boys"), showing up in a Y2K-style "I [Heart] ND" sequined tank top to duet with Stefani on "Bathwater." (Rodrigo was also spotted in the crowd with her pal Conan Gray, earnestly singing along to every word of "Simple Kind of Life.")
Stefani even maintained her boundless, joyous energy for a scathing song about one famous stupid boy in her own life, "Ex-Girlfriend," the one entry in No Doubt's catalog that she recently confessed she can barely listen to without "throwing up." And when she left the stage to change out of her tattered tinsel-tartan custom couture into something a little more comfortable (a bedazzled mini-tracksuit that made it easier for her to execute 10 consecutive "boy-style" push-ups before breathlessly launching into "Just a Girl"), the momentum still didn't slow — as Kanal, Young (wearing Cherries in the Snow lipstick that perfectly complemented Gwen's iconic pout), and DuMont paid tribute to their ska influences, entertaining the crowd with a spirited jam of Prince Buster/Madness's "One Step Beyond."
As for "Just a Girl," which has recently been embraced as a feminist anthem by the TikTok generation, Stefani told the crowd: "We wrote this song back at the Beacon Street house in Anaheim, Calif., and I feel like... Well, you tell me, but I feel like this song could possibly be more relevant now than it's ever been. You tell me." She then proceeded to scramble up the stage's scaffolding (someone please give me the name of her personal trainer, stat) to lead the crowd's "boys" and "girls" in a sing-off of the chorus, in which the ladies seemed to easily prevail. "There's no f---king comparison!" Stefani laughed.
As No Doubt ended their victorious set by walking in the "Spiderwebs" and then walking off into the proverbial Indio desert sunset (with Stefani adorably riding Kanal piggyback), this seemed more like a new beginning, even if Stefani recently described the band's reunion to Nylon as "a really nice bow to tie on the relationship." As for now, the Return of Saturn band will at least return to the Empire Polo Field next Saturday for Coachella weekend two, and three-fourths of No Doubt will be back onstage next month at another Goldenvoice music festival, Los Angeles's Cruel World, with their Davey Havok-fronted new wave supergroup, Dreamcar.
Earlier Saturday on the main stage, No Doubt's SoCal ska peers Sublime, whose late lead singer Bradley Nowell collaborated with a pre-megafame No Doubt on the Beacon Street Collection track "Total Hate '95," performed with Bradley's almost eerily soundalike son, Jakob Nowell. Jakob, who at age 28 is now the same age that Bradley was when the alt-rock star died from a tragic heroin overdose in 1996, joined original Sublime members Bud Gaugh and Eric Wilson as the band's new frontman, playing his father's custom guitar and amp as he breezed through Sublime's classic jams — many of which had not been played by any Sublime configuration since '96 ("Garden Grove," "Pawn Shop," "Date Rape," "Badfish," "Doin' Time") or, in the case of "Romeo," since 1988. The group ended their crowd-pleasing, sun-soaked set with Jakob, who was only 11 months old when Bradley passed away, saying, "I love you, Dad" and reaching up to the cloudless heavens.
Saturday was an overall more nostalgic affair than Friday, with indie-rock Coachella veterans like Vampire Weekend (who agreed to play the festival with just one week's notice), Mojave Tent headliners the Drums, and sporadically reunited Britpop legends Blur all playing memorable sets. Blur's Damon Albarn, who has performed at Coachella multiple times in multiple guises — with Blur, with Gorillaz, with his short-lived supergroup the Good, the Bad & the Queen, and as the surprise guest of 2022 headliner Billie Eilish — joked, "I am painfully aware of how out-of-sync we are with the cool s---." And unlike his contemporaries No Doubt, he seemed hell-bent on avoiding oldies nostalgia and most of his recognizable hits. But when Blur finally got around to the festival classic "Girls & Boys"; the sports-stadium anthem that "has been so good to us" (and, as Albarn noted with a surprising amount of pride, has been "covered" by a Hoover vacuum on TikTok), "Song 2"; and an emotional finale of "Tender" with local indigenous troupe the Torres Martinez Cahuilla Bird Singers, all those love-in-the-'90s vibes were deeply felt. "I'm really enjoying myself," Albarn stated with a simple, sincere smile.
Weekend one of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival concludes Sunday with a female-centric, not-just-a-girl pop lineup that includes Renee Rapp, recent Best New Artist Grammy-winner Victoria Monet, Jhene Aiko, and returning headliner Doja Cat.
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