"THE SWEET ESCAPE" BY GWEN STEFANI; INTERSCOPE

Gwen Stefani's 2004 solo debut "Love. Angel. Music. Baby." was nearly impossible to dislike. The CD boasted crafty, creative nonstop hooks on one infectious electropop tune after another. However, the sequel, "The Sweet Escape," sends Stefani spiraling into Fergie territory. Sweet? It's the cockroach found at the bottom of the glass in your ice-cream sundae.

While "L.A.M.B." aimed for stylistic diversity, the commercially calculating "Sweet Escape" finds Stefani largely in ill-fitting "Hollaback Girl" hip-hop mode but without the hooks that saved her the last time.

Working with the usual Top 40 suspects as producers (Neptunes, et al.), "Escape's" first single "Wind It Up" cobbles a tune from "The Sound of Music" and Stefani's woeful yodeling into what may well be the most gratingly insipid and bungled track of 2006. Only on the Nellee Hooper-produced tracks "Early Winter" and "Wonderful Life" does Stefani sing appealingly.

Overall, the disappointing "Sweet Escape" comes across as contrived and plastic as the CD's airbrushed cover photos that have Stefani looking like a mannequin version of Michelle Pfeiffer's "Scarface" character Elvira.

Pod Picks: "Early Winter," "Wonderful Life."