A big announcement to begin with - Charlie Winston's second album Hobo is hereby my official "album I'd buy for my mum" award 2009. Far from a source of mockery, this is a big and serious thing. I love my mum a lot, and she's no fool when it comes to music, and so to say that Hobo would be a great thing for her is among the highest praise I can bestow. Of course, you can can't really give a mum a present which you got free as a review copy, so in actual fact the idea is out of the window, but it's still a big accolade!So is Hobo meaningless, sentimental slush, like what we might normally associate with mum-gifts? No, and far from it. This is a mature and varied album, which crucially, will stand up to repeated listens. This album and its single 'Like A Hobo' have proven to be major successes around Europe (especially France, incidentally) and it soon becomes apparent why. This is accessible, fun, but sometimes serious pop, played with great competence and sung with apparent ease by the talented Winston himself. There are some interesting quirks too - as on 'Kick the Bucket', a jovial song about death, and on the nonsensical but sweet 'My Life as a Duck', complete with beatboxing (!). Notable also is 'Boxes', an ode to childhood simplicity and innocence which is like a more sparse and classical re-write of Supertramp's 1979 classic 'The Logical Song'.Possibly the biggest achievement of this album is how smoothly it's able to move between disparate genres. It effectively handles folk-rock ('Like A Hobo'), jazz complete with sax solo ('I Love Your Smile'), and mostly-sung-in-French comedy pop ('Tongue Tied') a grand duet ('Soundtrack to Falling in Love') and various others. My main criticism of the record is a minor one - sequencing. The middle of the album is allowed to sag a little, being too dominated by quieter, slower numbers, before the great and surely credit-crunch inspired 'Generation Spent' kicks the proceedings back into gear. The final track, 'My Name' is one of the album's only negative songs, a rather bitter affair which is a very odd choice to conclude the album. It's reminiscent of Coldplay putting 'Twisted Logic' at the end of X&Y, without an pleasant acoustic track to temper the mood. It's not that there's anything wrong with ending an album on a downbeat note, but it feels odd to do so here.Nevertheless, this is an assured and very impressive set of songs. Some will gravitate more towards the quieter songs and ballads, some towards the more upbeat songs, but they're both here in similar quantities, and a few songs modulate smoothly between the two modes. Recommended, for mums and others alike.

Buy the album on Amazon | [itunes link="http://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/like-hobo/id327834260?uo=4" title="Charlie_Winston-Hobo_(Bonus_Track_Version)_(Album)" text="iTunes"]