This article first appeared at upstart.

Assigning an artist to a particular genre can be a challenging task. Do Ke$ha’s drunken ramblings count as crunkcore, hip-hop or electropop? Should The Mars Volta be filed under psychedelic-rock, jazz-fusion or progressive-punk? Are Godspeed You! Black Emperor an embodiment of post-rock or should we just call them alternative? Thankfully, some musicians are a little easier to pigeonhole; Katy Perry for one.

If you were looking for a definition of ‘pop music’, Perry’s recently released second album, ‘Teenage Dream’, would be all you’d need to know. It’s a 40 minute trip through a sugary world of catchy choruses, up-tempo dance beats and barely-restrained sexual desire. The songs are short and sharp, produced and processed within an inch of their lives, and Perry’s vocals sound like they’ve been tweaked and tuned at every possible opportunity.

In fact, the entire album is one giant pop cliché; there’s the token party anthem, complete with a celebration of teenage booze culture (‘Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F)’), the predictable declaration of undying love (‘Hummingbird Heartbeat’) and, of course, the heartfelt piano ballad (‘Not Like the Movies’).

In many ways, this album encapsulates everything that’s wrong with popular music today. It’s a formulaic, over-produced and largely lifeless outing that does little to advance the state of music. The majority of the lyrics are bland, predictable or both and singing about the virtues of weekly intoxication is so 2008.

Strangely though, it’s still thoroughly listenable.

Thanks to strong support from commercial radio stations, dance-pop tracks like ‘California Gurls’ and ‘Teenage Dream’ are already firmly entrenched in the popular consciousness. But while hits like these will draw listeners to album, it’s the non-radio tracks that are likely to give ‘Teenage Dream’ some sort of longevity.

In ‘Pearl’ Perry recalls a time when she allowed herself to be controlled by the man in her life, meanwhile reassuring the listener that such a relationship isn’t all that conducive to personal growth. In ‘Circle the Drain’ Perry takes a break from sugar-sweet party anthems and delivers a fairly biting account of her ex’s seemingly-destructive drug habit. While a break-up song is hardly a novelty for a pop album there’s something refreshing about Perry’s change of pace here.

In fact, it’s the album’s darker, more thoughtful moments that really give ‘Teenage Dream’ substance. ‘Who Am I Living For?’ is probably the album’s strongest track due largely to its surprising, and refreshingly original references to the biblical figure of Esther. With lyrics like ‘It’s never easy to be chosen, never easy to be called, standing on the front line when the bombs start to fall’, this track is a far cry from the clichéd dance-pop that dominates the album.

Unfortunately, Perry’s foray into the world of thoughtful subject matter is short-lived. On ‘Peacock’ she delivers one of the most unconvincing attempts at subtlety in the history of popular music;

‘I wanna see your peacock, cock, cock,
Your peacock, cock.
Your peacock, cock, cock,
Your peacock.’

But lest the audience be confused by her attempted double entendre, Ms Perry makes it quite clear that she isn’t talking about brightly coloured birds;

‘Are you brave enough to let me see your peacock?
What you waiting for, it’s time for you to show it off.
Don’t be a shy kinda guy, I bet it’s beautiful,
Come on baby let me see, what you’re hiding underneath’.

‘Teenage Dream’ will not win any awards for its musicianship, its originality or its lyrical content but there are certainly worse things you could be listening to. This is about as ‘pop’ as pop music gets but if you’re prepared to listen to it as such then Perry’s brief departures from the pop-princess paradigm will come as a refreshing change.

The Verdict: 3/5

This review first appeared at upstart.

With the volume of mind-numbing dross that comes out of Hollywood these days, it’s refreshing to find a film that actually forces the viewer to do some thinking. Make no mistake about it; Inception is mind-numbing, but in the best way possible.

The film follows the plight of Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), an ‘extractor’ who has fled the US after being implicated in his wife’s death. In leaving his country behind, Cobb has also become separated from his young children and the film pivots around Cobb’s attempts at a family reunion. But this emotional hook is only the skeleton of a wonderfully confusing and thought-provoking film.

As an ‘extractor’, Cobb invades people’s dreams, entering their subconscious mind in order to ‘extract’ valuable secrets. When he accepts an offer to perform an ‘inception’ – an attempt to plant an idea in a target’s head – things become a little more challenging for Cobb and wonderfully mind-bending for the viewer.

Cobb assembles a crack team – dream ‘architect’ Ariadne, sedatives expert Yusuf, ‘forger’ Eames, and ‘point man’ Arthur – and together they attempt to subconsciously influence the young heir to a multi-national corporation. What follows is a perplexing journey through various characters’ dreams, through dreams-within-dreams and through questions about the very nature of reality itself.

It’s very easy to get lost within the complexity of this film and a number of times I found myself wanting to pause the film, just to have a chance to digest everything that was happening. For this reason, Inception is a brave film – not everyone will enjoy the intricate storyline and viewers who like their films short and flashy might find this to be fairly tough going.

Luckily, there are several cues to help the audience navigate through this philosophical playground. For example, whenever the young dream architect Ariadne (Ellen Page) asks a question of the more experienced extractors, it is as much about explaining the film’s plot to the audience as it is about moving the story forward. Just as her mythological namesake helped Theseus to escape from the depths of the Cretian labyrinth, Inception’s Ariadne helps the viewer to successfully navigate the twists and turns of the film’s complex plot.

Full credit must go to writer, producer and director Christopher Nolan here for his vision and execution in bringing Inception to the big screen. The film had been in development for ten years prior to its release and it’s not hard to see why.

Where a film like Avatar was visually impressive but lacking an original storyline, Inception delivers on both fronts, keeping the audience on their toes throughout. Sure, Nolan is heavily influenced by the likes of Stanley Kubrick, Ridley Scott and the Wachowski brothers, but Inception still manages a fusion of fast-paced gun-play, engaging storyline and philosophy that few films can lay claim to.

Special mention should also go to Inception’s cinematographer, Wally Pfister, who brings the film’s breathtaking car-chases, amazing cityscapes and action set-pieces to life in a way that is truly captivating. The dream worlds of Inception are particularly impressive and the sight of Paris folding in on itself and the zero-gravity hotel fight will stick with the viewer long after leaving the cinema.

Inception is a film that challenges you to stay involved the whole way through and that is likely to leave you feeling a little dazed and confused. It’s also a film that leaves you with as many questions as it answers and the film’s final sequence is no exception.

If you enjoy films that are thought-provoking and that leave you questioning plotlines for days afterwards then go and see Inception. At times it’s a challenge just to keep up, but it’s more than worth the effort.

The verdict: 5/5