Who wouldn’t want a robot friend? Who wouldn’t want to be a robot for that matter?

I would, and so would Howard Robot which is why he calls his solo music project My Robot Friend and why he performs (and lives?) in the cool home made electronic suit pictured here.

I had read somewhere that My Robot Friend’s third album, the recently released Soft Core sounded like The Pet Shop Boys. Breathe easily, it doesn’t. Not in the slightest. It is a bit difficult to pin point exactly what it does sound like though, being such a varied collage of songs.

It kicks off as you might expect an album made by someone called Howard Robot to. Robot High School bleeps and buzzes around a heavy synth sound and an effects laden vocal. Misfits Fight Song is a lighter more poppy version of the opener but then we’re off down some unusual avenues. The album features several collaborations. Dean Wareham contributes the skittering By Your Side and the outstanding Astronaut which has his trademark somnambulant wooziness and sounds not unlike Spacemen 3 at their most mellow. The Short Game, a collaboration with Zombie Nation, sounds like a lost New Order classic and Waiting appears twice – first as an 80’s electro dance track with Alison Moyet on vocals then reprised as a bluegrass folk song with Jay Kauffman on finger picking duties.

Sandwiched between all that are two songs, Boyfriend and the wryly observed Failure, which could easily be Jonathan Richman and Daniel Johnston songs, albeit performed as a duet with Metal Mickey in the case of Boyfriend.

This is a curious and ridiculously catchy mix of playfulness and sensitivity, classic pop and modern electronica. Hopefully by next Christmas, we’ll all be able to have our own My Robot Friend Suit to dance along in.

Visit My Robot Friend here.