My Robot Friend: Soft-Core
With my car in the shop (blown radiator & cracked head gasket), I’ve been driving a loaner for the better part of a week. When I first started up my loaner POS I discovered that all of the stereo channels had been programmed to various spanish-language stations. Ugh.
When I got home I grabbed the closest CD I had on hand and threw it into the car, not paying too much mind to which CD I picked up. Turns out I snagged Soft-Core by My Robot Friend. This happened to be an album that I hadn’t paid much attention to, but after listening to it on repeat for the past five days it’s become of my favorite albums as of late.
Once you get beyond the whole “I’m a robot and I sing about robots” schtick, the album is amazingly solid. This is the perfect album to listen to while on a long drive to nowhere in particular. As for their sound, imagine putting Depeche Mode, LaTour, The Postal Service, and Kraftwerk into a blender and pressing the puree button. Add a pinch of Datarock and a dash of The Shins and you’ll wind up with a valid facsimile of MRF. Though classified as an electronica band, there’s enough keyboard and guitar to keep the mellow sound well congealed and defined, so don’t let the “electronica” tag dissuade you. I think it’s a case of a record exec trying to pigeonhole this album into a category for connivence sake, and getting the category completely wrong.
MRF’s most easily digestible track would unquestionably be “Robot High School”, but I tend to enjoy the vibe of the track “Failure”.
As the week wore on this album continued to grow on me. As a whole, I found there’s really not one klunker track in the bunch. Rare is the album that’s thought out enough that lets you press ‘play’ and simply walk away.
At first glance this album might seem a bit tame and redundant, but repeated plays really brings out its subtle, quirky brilliance. Plunk down some cash, download the album, throw it into your car, press “play” and take a ride to anywhere but here. I’m confident that you’ll enjoy the trip.
Oh, and in case you were wondering what the ultimate driving song is…”Twilight Zone” by Golden Earring. You can disagree, but you’d be wrong 
