After solo projects, family time and last year’s summer reunion tour, it looks like No Doubt are getting down to business on their long-awaited sixth studio album. The band, which has been working on the project intermittently over the past few years, has taken to Twitter to keep fans updated.
“Tony and Gwen are rocking the synth. Our little studio is warm and candlelit, above the glowing city. Tom,” guitarist Tom Dumont tweeted on Wednesday evening.
Dumont has been tweetingabout their progress for the past week, with the first landing on January 20. “Back in the studio together writing today. Synth horns=cheesy but fun. 
,” he tweeted.
The following day brought even more work for the group as Dumont tweeted a close-up picture of bassist Tony Kanal in the studio with singer Gwen Stefani.
The bandmembers worked on new material without Stefani for some time. “Tony, Adrian and I have been busy preparing material for the album since this time last year,” Dumont told MTV News in an e-mail in 2007. The following year, drummer Adrian Young talked loosely about the new material. “It seems like we’ve always come from an eclectic background musically,” he said. “But we seem to always gravitate towards reggae. I can’t say that’s what our record is going to be like, ’cause it’s too early to tell, but what makes us feel really good is reggae music. I can play reggae music to my grave.”
Last May, the group used an appearance on “American Idol” to preview what Stefani called “the procrastination tour” (with Paramore opening), and made a cameo appearance on “Gossip Girl,” covering Adam & the Ants’ 1981 track “Stand and Deliver.”
The band hoped to use the tour as a way to reconnect and find inspiration for their new material. “Once we reconnect onstage and reconnect with all the people who have supported us, I think it’s going to inspire us to make an amazing record,” Kanal said before the tour.
Gwen Stefani apparently did not take the advice of her most-famous No Doubt hit when talking to Elle for their July women-in-music cover story (on stands June 15). Quite the opposite, in fact: The platinum-coiffed singer offered some curiously candid soundbites on dynamics within the band, her new life as a mother to two genetically-gifted sons with Gavin Rossdale, and may have also confirmed her two solo albums were totally phony. Check these out:
