Charlie McDonnell, This Is Me album review

Hello, and welcome again to tip of the hat music reviews. For our second review we're looking at Charlie McDonnell's "This Is Me", an album which came out in December 2010 and we only just discovered ourselves about a month ago.
Anybody who follows Charlie Macdonnell's youtube channel and knows about his Dr Who Based band Chameleon Circuit will be completely aware of the man's talents and already have a respect for what he does, but if you've never heard of the guy, (as we hadn't), he's been uploading science related, funilly delivered videos for a few years with the occasional original song either science related in some way or comedy-esque songs on other subjects, (like acne, self talk and imaginary girlfriends).

This album is a collection of said songs and I have to say, I bought it on the strength of the videos and was pleasantly suprised that I got a little more than I'd anticipated, on top of the funny there's also a nice bit of personal song writing in here about being sensible and not rushing into relationships, about a girl named Melody, ("Melody for Melody" I have to admit is a bit of a stupid title for a song but the song itself is killer), and also the title track "This is me", which sort of reminds me of Kate Nash's Mouth Wash as far as lyrical content goes, although that song's more about independance and self respect and this one's a little less self assured.
The comedy is strong too, as it's what the man seems to be most interested in, (or atleast most prolific in), there's a couple of story-like tracks about betrayal among bakers and Father Christmas going mad at Haloween which I think would be fantastic twisted children's books if they were given life in some gothic-y cartoon-ish artwork, and there's "Rhymezone.com",which is a great tongue twistery sing along once you hear it a few times. "Chemical Love" starts out as a typical love song but obviously typical and you know the funny is coming, and it's somewhat science related when it does. "A song about monkeys" has a couple funny lines but it sort of treads that interesting line between being funny and being just an expression of an idea through music, it's a good listen anyway."Hayley G Hoover" is about another frequent you-tube poster whose working in the same vein as Charlie, and about how he likes to imagine she's his girlfriend, "A Song About A Song" is a self confessed filler track, but it's got a nice energy to it, and some kazoo. The final track, "The Birthday Song" is another straight comedy song about a generic birthday song involving the line "happy birthday insert name here", it's just plain funny, but it had re-listen value, as does the entire album because of the afore mentioned sing-alongy nature and nice energy in the songs.

This album is a solid peice of work from start to finish, especially for a first album and I hope to hear more from Charlie in the future. You can have a listen to some of it in the little music player below and also go get it from iTunes with the little iTunes button below that.