Reinventing herself as one of the girls

CHULA VISTA, CALIF. —  In the delicious title track of last year’s “The Sweet Escape,” Gwen Stefani sings about wanting to create a place as her own world, and that’s exactly what she did Sunday at the Coors Amphitheatre, the first official date of a new world tour that will keep the No Doubt frontwoman on the road through mid-October.

Since striking out on her own with 2004’s “Love. Angel. Music. Baby.,” Stefani has established herself as the preeminent heir to Madonna’s patented pop pastiche. The singer’s material doesn’t adhere to a distinct form, or even several distinct forms. In her studio collaborations with top-flight producers such as the Neptunes, Dallas Austin and Dr. Dre, Stefani switches up countless styles -- from slow-jam R&B; to booming Eurotechno to swinging, ‘60s-inspired soul -- as quickly and effortlessly as a model changing clothes during a fashion show.

As even a cursory listen to Top 40 radio makes clear, that’s now the norm in pop. But where other mix-and-match magpies can get lost in the sonic shuffle, Stefani -- like the Material Girl before her -- always seems in control of her music. There’s a sense of authorship to her two albums that differentiates Stefani’s stuff from similarly situated work by acts such as Fergie and Nelly Furtado.

Stefani benefits from the talents of her carefully selected sidemen, to be sure, but the creative gestalt is all her own.

On Sunday, the singer funneled her albums’ kaleidoscopic pleasures into an action-packed audiovisual spectacle that featured eight dancers, six musicians and more costumes than a Broadway musical. For 75 tightly choreographed minutes, the Coors was ablaze with color and texture and sound; no modern arena-show trick was left unperformed.

In “Rich Girl,” Stefani broke into an enormous vault with the help of a crew of dancing ninjas. During “Yummy,” she did steps on a moving treadmill while flanked by a pair of dueling keytar players. “Luxurious” brought to the stage lap-dancing geishas and fedora-topped film-noir gangsters. “Hollaback Girl” could have been a scene from a PG-13 version of “High School Musical.”

Yet despite the willful aesthetic overload, Stefani never seemed overpowered by these antics. As on her records, she commanded the disparate elements swirling around her rather than allowing herself to be smothered by them.

That was partly a product of her voice, a relatively modest instrument that she has learned to amp up over years of touring large venues. Thanks to the difficulty of creating a rich sound in a space with room for 14,000, ballads usually serve as bathroom breaks in shows like this. Yet Stefani sang “Early Winter” and “Cool” (the latter from a miniature stage in the middle of the audience) with unexpected power.

But more than any technical abilities, Stefani’s presence is about charisma, that invaluable pop-star must-have. On Sunday, she succeeded in telling the audience something about herself. It wasn’t necessarily a consistent message: Half the songs boasted of Stefani’s extravagant lifestyle while the other half insisted that she’s “just an Orange Country girl living in an extraordinary world.”

But the singer made her bundle of contradictions feel lifelike (or at least larger-than-lifelike). During “Orange County Girl,” Stefani performed in front of a video montage that told the Story of Gwen, from her adolescent days as a crazy-haired punk chick to the glamorous life she now lives in L.A. and London.

More often than not, this kind of demonstration of a star’s just-folks humility hits an icky, self-congratulatory note. Yet at the Coors it rang true -- all the more so because it came after “Wonderful Life,” one of the many songs Stefani has written in which she looks back on simpler days with a heavy-hearted nostalgia. In the middle of this full-tilt pop circus, Stefani gave the audience a surprisingly intimate look at Gwennie from the block.

Then she changed into a pair of glittery leopard-print hot pants and led four platinum-wigged Harajuku girls in a round of Jazzercise. Just like you and me, right?

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Gwen Stefani

Where: Gibson Amphitheatre, 100 Universal City Plaza, Universal City

When: 8:15 p.m. Friday

Price: $75

Contact: (818) 777-3931