Katy’s coming of age

Katy Perry Prism Capitol Records ***
Who is Katy Perry? Is there anything behind the cyborg image, all perfect red lipstick, glossy locks and wide, cornflower-blue eyes? Certainly, beyond her brief and publicly played-out marriage to Russell Brand, she has often seemed like a brilliantly calculated piece of manufacturing: pitch-perfect in all those huge, euphoric songs, a kind of singing mannequin for teenagers who’ve grown out of their Bratz dolls. And previous albums have done little to illuminate her personality.
In Prism, which Perry has described as being the result of self-reflection, we do begin to see glimpses of some character trying to escape from between the monolithic slabs of nightclub-friendly EDM lovingly polished by her producers, who include Max Martin, Dr Luke, Klas Ahlund and Bloodshy.
The already ubiquitous single Roar is the catchiest of the album’s tracks, but this is the queen of the chorus after all, and there are few songs here that don’t have instantly memorable refrains rendered in full auditory Technicolor.
Legendary Lovers, with its bhangra drums, takes her beyond the standard robotic belting towards a Florence Welch-like variety of hoots and shrieks. Double Rainbow and Spiritual both feature a harder, synthier, slightly New Wave sound that enhances Perry’s expressive powers, allowing her to continue her journey of vocal discovery.
Indeed, discovery is a theme with this album, as she works her way through genre after genre, from spare, sibilant hip-hop in Dark Horse, through laid-back Ke$ha-style sass in This Is How We Do to the 1990s house piano stabs of Walking on Air.
Yet, Perry is rarely able to escape the formulaic song structures and trademark Eurodance walls of sound – even the Giorgio Moroder-style disco bass that opens This Moment is overwhelmed by a pedestrian three-chord chorus.
The free-spirited flower child of the cover art does find her voice at the very end of the album, with the powerful Choose Your Battles, which combines echoey synths and real, tribal, rhythmic drive with her most subtly shaded vocal on the record, showing that with maturity may come some grit and interpretative power. And funnily enough, that song has a touch of Blade Runner darkness about it – the disturbing blend of vulnerability and machine-like perfection that makes the film’s replicants so striking. An apt analogy for Perry’s continuing transformation from ET to human.
[email protected]