Gwen Stefani’s voice burns white hot at the center of every project she’s involved in, whether it’s the lighter chorus of No Doubt’s neo-power ballad “Don’t Speak” or leading girl-power cheers on her feisty solo song. Hollaback girl. Her still-nimble mezzo-soprano is the main attraction on her fifth solo album and first since 2016. This is what the truth feels like what, she said Rolling stone in September, was released in ‘middle of my hell’. After what she said was “eight years of healing, eight years of transition” — including her marrying a country crossover king and fellow The voice coach Blake Shelton in 2021 – she has been released Bouquetan aggressively enjoyable collection that continues the rebranding of ex-SoCal punk into a down-home country gal.

Not that she’s completely swapped her Doc Martens for cowboy boots. “Somebody Else’s,” the bouncy track that opens the album, is fueled by resentment and regret, with Stefani letting an ex know she’s glad he’s moved on—a repudiation of her tumultuous past that sets up the rosier scenarios that follow. That opener is a highlight of an album that tries to split the difference between Stefani’s pit-ready past and the country woman’s present. “Pretty,” a slide guitar-accented ballad in which Stefani collects her regrets before revealing that she “never felt beautiful until you loved me” is another highlight, with Stefani’s voice almost nodding as she relives the shock of being adored again be by someone else.

Bouquet is full of floral imagery: the anniversary party-appropriate title track is strewn with sunflowers and roses; the road trip playlist-crafted “Marigolds” turns its titular flowers into a marital bed; In ‘Empty Vase’, Stefani flirtatiously bends her voice in gratitude, a nice counterpoint to the slide guitar that symbolizes her dark past; and ‘Purple Irises’, a sparkling duet with Shelton, uses the flowers to express mutual satisfaction. (There’s even a song called “Late to Bloom,” a glossy country-pop-punk ditty that revels in finding love late in life.) Stefani’s escape to her garden of contentment is pleasant enough, if a little faint if inhaled all at once. .