Tarmac Group of the 1980s, British housebuilding was accounting for half of group profits but it was not the only activity to have been expanded. An alternative profits centre had been built up in the United States, starting in 1984, with the staged acquisition of Lone Star Industries; by the end of the decade Tarmac was operating across seven states in the United States. Construction in the United Kingdom had also grown and Tarmac was involved in such prestige projects as the Thames Barrier and the Channel Tunnel. However, the expansionary nature of the group did not leave it well placed to
This Is What the Truth Feels Like It was the venue for her first live performance with her band No Doubt opening for Ziggy Marley in 1990. "This Is What the Truth Feels Like" received generally favorable reviews from contemporary music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received an average score of 62, based on 16 reviews. Leah Greenblatt of "Entertainment Weekly" stated that Stefani's material "feels truer—and sounds stronger—than it has in years". Mikael Wood of the "Los Angeles Times" was very positive in his review, highlighting that "[h]er singing—and, more important, what her