OPENING CREDITS
Trust Me Records (2000)

Album (CD)



Q Magazine (UK)
CMJ Monthly (USA)
New York Newsday
The Boston Phoenix/The Portland Phoenix
LA Weekly
Time Out New York
Detroit Metro Times
Rock Sound (UK)
Time Out London
CMJ New Music Report (USA)
Melody Maker (UK)
Exclaim (Canada)
Launch (Web)
Aversion (Web)
Amazon.co.uk
Xfm.co.uk
All Music Guide (Web)
iJamming (Web)
Melody Maker (UK/ - End Credits - single) - Review 1
Melody Maker (UK/ - End Credits - single) - Review 2

Q Magazine (UK)
Laptop: Opening Credits
4 out of 5 stars
February 2001

By Anna Britten

Cultish New York Synthpopper's debut album -- Laptop is Jesse Hartman, one time guitarist for '70's punk guru Richard Hell and creator of 1998's much-praised End Credits EP. This debut combines tracks from the latter with material from the last four years and showcases Hartman's reputation as a Beck-meets-Human League digital wizard. Stand-out tracks include End Credits itself, an '80s-style anthem that would sit happily in a John Hughes teen movie, and the electro rock 'n' roll rant Wedding Band. Bitter, bitchy and as witty as a younger computer-literate Woody Allen, he concludes his 'users guide to your 20s' with a tongue-in-cheek robop version of Billy Joel's It's Still Rock 'n' Roll To Me. Quietly brilliant.



CMJ Monthly (USA)
Laptop: Opening Credits

May/June 2001
By Scott Frampton

Is it Passover? Because I think I've found the bitter herb. From Neil Tennant to Momus and Stephin Merritt, synth-pop has long been the preferred medium for messages of the droll and bitter, and it perfectly suits the sourmien of Laptop's Jesse Hartman as well. Very little on Opening Credits suggests it was made after 1986, a rare occasion in the resurgent synth-pop nation, where this in an unqualified good thing. Hartman's vocals are in the dry, new-wave baritone of Human League's Phil Oakey, only more detached. This makes one desperately want to hear his take on "Don't You Want Me," because a man who writes lyrics like "your misery makes me smile" really can believe it when he hears that you won't see him. While it's easy to get caught up in the new-wave nostalgia and giddy cruelty of tracks like "I'm So Happy You Failed" -- the chorus is the title sung by a children's choir for Christ's sake -- it's worth noting that the always tuneful, well-arranged music takes advantage of the machines' possibilities rather than celebrating their limitations. In a genre known for high-IQ insult merchants, Hartman assays former and soon-to-be-former lovers smartly and knowingly, balancing japes with lyrics like "I can't write...another story of love gone wrong" when you know damn well that's what he's been doing all along.



New York Newsday
Laptop: Opening Credits

April 19, 2001
By Tony Fletcher

New Yorker Jesse Hartman, aka Laptop, released four of these songs on a major label EP two years ago. The savage “I’m So Happy You Failed – aimed at another band’s misfortune – must have brought bad karma: He was subsequently dropped. Fortunately, Hartman’s pithy vocals, Casio-style keyboards and new wave grooves are better suited to outsider status. Singing mainly of romance, he uses film analogies on “End Credits,” recklessly compares a new squeeze to old ones on “Greatest Hits” and says of an ex on “The Reason” that “you were a loon before I even set eyes on you.” Hartman is heartless, but he’s also hilarious, and for that reason, just be happy he’s survived.




The Boston Phoenix/The Portland Phoenix
Laptop: Opening Credits

March 29-April 4, 2001

By Tony Ware

Before christening himself Laptop, Jesse Hartman did a stint as guitarist/keyboardist for the Japanese leg of NYC proto-punk Richard Hell’s 1990 comeback tour, acted, and produced music videos and short, award-winning independent films like Happy Hour, which won the Best Short Film Bear at the 1993 Berlin International Film Festival. Opening Credits, Hartman’s full-length Laptop debut, reflects his interests in Television (the band) and film (the medium). But his songs owe less to New York art rock and no wave than to the formative British new wave of Gary Numan.

Hartman anchors three-minute voyeuristic electro-pop tales of failed relationships with his melancholic baritone. And much like Stephin Merritt of the Magnetic Fields, he offsets his gloomy, lovelorn wit with the kind of bouncy synth-pop that brings to mind ’80s favorites like A Flock of Seagulls and a-ha. The Baroque synth-goth tune “End Credits” and the taunting “I’m So Happy You Failed” offer teen angst tempered with adult insight. And though there’s more than a little tongue in Hartman’s cheek on his cover of Billy Joel’s “It’s Still Rock ’n’ Roll to Me,” Laptop isn’t marred by the heavy-handed irony that infected ’90s nostalgists like the Rentals.



LA Weekly
Laptop: Opening Credits

April 6-12, 2001
By Michael Lipton

Those who might recall the name Jesse Hartman from his former band Sammy (which peaked with 1996’s Lou Reed/Television–influenced Tales of Great Neck Glory on Geffen) will hardly recognize the N.Y. musician-filmmaker’s new persona. The solo debut from the now-one-man band is a smart, chameleonlike release that’s informed by a generation (or two) of influences, some of which are easily recognizable, while others are run through Hartman’s twisted blender (or, in this case, laptop — he reportedly pieced together the entire record on a Mac PowerBook).

More low-fi and offbeat (i.e., interesting) than Sammy’s rather predictable indie sound, Hartman’s new tunes may use mainly “synthetic” instruments, but they come off with a refreshing amount of heart, soul and, most of all, cynicism. “Greatest Hits” is a first-class Brit-white-boy-wise-ass nugget of synth-funk, complete with bent synth-bass lines and Morris Day shuck and jive. And you can’t help but love the grand anthem “I’m So Happy You Failed,” which pokes fun at the fate of a fellow musician (“Word on the street says your second record’s dead . . . I’m sinking to your level . . . I know I’m going to hell . . . but I’m so happy you failed”). Twisting the knife a bit more, Hartman includes a chorus of taunts from children and, on the “I Am the Walrus”–ish coda, he changes the “I” to “we.” On “End Credits” and the pre-techno groove of “Nothing To Declare,” he affects his voice à la Bowie circa Low, while on “A Little Guilt” (“Nothing like a little guilt to make you feel like you want to die”), it becomes a painful satire of Robert Smith’s aching croon.

Hartman makes no bones about things like canned drums — especially on “Another Song,” a tuneful gem of a pop song, and his cut-and-paste quilt of sounds and voices turns “The Stranger” into a helluva dance track. For a one-man effort, Opening Credits is anything but one-dimensional and recalls a time when “intelligent” didn’t translate to “boring” — or sacrificing a groove.



Time Out New York
Laptop: Opening Credits

March 28 2001

By Grace Winden

The word "laptop" conjures a tool designed to reduce the number of objects in a person's life, one that is theoretically vast yet spatially compact. But how does this concept affect the way we process the events in our lives? We can begin to imagine our daily experiences metaphorically as nonlinear and malleable; events are seen as files, to be stored and deleted, edited and compacted. We can also take these experiences, these files, and play with them. Jesse Hartman, the writer-producer behind the musical entity Laptop, seems to understand the benefits not only of virtual rehearsal but of virtual reconstruction. He takes the chaos and caprices of metropolitan life and plugs them into his computer, where they can be managed as well as manipulated. Hartman plays out his experiences as minidramas on his own virtual stage: Casting himself as the witty and conspiratorial narrator, he creates a mock epic, elevating the trivial to a place of disproportionate importance. The result is a humorous and somewhat bitter account of life's tribulations and modern romance.

The lyrical and conceptual elements of Opening Credits are what make it interesting. Musically, the album recalls the early 1980's, which help provide a pleasantly familiar and somewhat restrained backdrop. Hartman's Peter Murphy/David Bowie-style vocals elevate the songs and add a dynamic and emotional component to the carefully constructed arrangements. His strength lies not only in his storytelling but also in his ability to create other voices and characters with which to collaborate. In the chorus of "I'm So Happy You Failed," children's voices taunt and tease, bringing the singer's gloating and ridicule to the school playground, where it feels downright humiliating. Hartman is able to use the digital world as a means of processing and redefining human emotion rather than eradicating it. This makes both the album and the prospect of a technotronic society a bit more palatable, and certainly more enjoyable.



Detroit Metro Times
Flashy flashbacks

Laptop: Opening Credits -3 stars out of 5

Ladytron: 604 - 1 star out of 5

April 4, 2001
By Jimmy Draper

Given the recent retro-pop proliferation of the Prima Donnas, Baxendale, Future Bible Heroes and Stars, it’s not totally ludicrous to claim that some of the best ’80s music is being made almost two dozen years after video killed the radio star. And after this winter’s presidential inauguration of yet another bumbling, brain-dead idiot named Bush, Reaganomics doesn’t seem quite as long ago as it did pre-election. It may only be 2001, but sometimes it feels like the ‘90s never happened.

Laptop’s Jesse Hartman must think so too. On his one-man electro-band’s Opening Credits, Richard Hell’s ex-guitarist plunges headlong into the ’80s abyss of synth and sin. A magnificent mishmash of New Order, Devo and Gary Numan, the album is so successful at revisiting pop’s past that it could easily spend its shelf life in supermarket discount bins of Totally ’80s compilations. Laptop is too talented for such a fate, though: Unlike the way so many people dance with ironic, detached distance to those compilations, Hartman doesn’t want listeners to separate their fun from their feelings. And so despite a few corny missteps, the emotional investment beneath Laptop’s dance beats keeps his retro-disco from sounding like the novelty it probably would be otherwise.

Unfortunately, Liverpool’s Ladytron doesn’t pull off pop nostalgia quite so successfully. Overflowing with similar Atari-rigged robotics and deadpanned deliveries as Laptop, these Brit brainiacs’ full-length debut should be more dance floor fun than you can shake a glowstick at. Instead of coming off like a welcome throwback to the days of the Flying Lizards and Lene Lovich, however, 604 sounds like a party for black-clad artsy-fartsies more concerned with a stoic style than a solid sound. Although song titles such as “Discotrax” and “Jet Age” promise to set boom boxes ablaze, there’s not a single danceable beat in the bunch: This is Depeche Mode-damaged music for crossed-armed scenesters, where music is little more than an accessory to geek-chic fashion.

Which is too bad, really, because if a band wants to take listeners on a retro-tour through the ‘80s, then they better make the trip enjoyable. For many of us, surviving that decade once was enough — and while Laptop makes a great case for welcoming that era’s return, Ladytron aren’t gonna convince anyone to do it for the Gipper.



Rock Sound (UK)
Laptop: Opening Credits

4 out of 5 stars

January, 2001
By John Long

It’s been a long time coming, a long, long time. Laptop’s debut album is finally available to buy and about time too. Laptop is Jesse Hartman formerly of US alt. rockers Sammy and his handy 'laptop' computer which he uses to compose such masterpieces as the wonderfully sublime 'end Credits' a record which garnered lavish praise from critics when it was releases back in '98. Utilizing technology in his records Hartman manages to produce some spectacular results. From the marvelous and ironic 'I’m So Happy You Failed' to the customs running 'Nothing To Declare' he' s almost sounds like a modern day Gary Numan, but not so dark. Due to the wranglings with his previous label this record may have taken a long time to arrive but it has definitely been worth the wait.



Time Out London
Laptop: Opening Credits

January 24-30, 2001

Synth-pop sarcasm, melt -in the-mouth melodies and scenes straight out of Woody Allen from brilliant New York retro-futurist Jesse Hartman, aka Laptop. Once a guitarist for punk legend Richard Hell, the enigmatic mouse-clicker has finally come up trumps with debut album 'Opening Credits' (Trust Me): a witty, humorous, bitchy, and pretty darned wonderful “user’s guide to your 20s.



CMJ New Music Report (USA)
Essential: Laptop – “Opening Credits”

Feb 26, 2001
By Tony Mallon

Judging by the lyrics on Laptop's Opening Credits, Jesse Hartman is a miserable bastard. He hates his ex-girlfriends, he hates his crushes and he hates other musicians, but most of all, he hates himself. Luckily, he dresses up his neuroses in such sweet hooks and icy wit that he makes being wretched sound like fun. That humor is what makes Laptop stand out from all the other sad-boy-and-his-computer acts out there, delivering songs like "I'm So Happy You Failed", in which he (joined, eventually, by the entire populations of Japan, German and Brazil) dryly celebrates the stiff sales of a friend's album. Even better is the slippery electro-funk of "Greatest Hits," which pits him (and an extra-cheesy synth horn section) against an ornery chorus of soon-to-be former girlfriends. The music is as smartly constructed as his tales of woe: "Bad News" stacks a bouncy bass-chord riff on top of a thumping beat and percolating synths; album opener "End Credits" wraps telephone samples and backwards guitars in a swirling bed of melodramatic organs and echoing beats. Hartman's greatest strength is that, unlike many acts riding the recent synth-pop resurgence, he doesn't take himself the least bit seriously. It's refreshing to hear a record that would rather be fun than fabulous.



Melody Maker (UK)
Laptop: Opening Credits

4 out of 5 stars

December, 2000

The current vogue for everything Eighties has conveniently bypassed the music industry. It may be cool to dust off your fluffy neon-pink legwarmers and puffball skirts, but saying you love gorgeous synth-pop heroes like the Human League is as fashionable as admitting you were once interviewed for 'Songs Of Praise'. Nevertheless, Laptop frontman Jesse Hartman is bravely fighting a one-man battle to bring synthesizers and drum machines back in to your hard rockin' hearts. And though his swanky electropop will get completely crushed under Eminem and Durst's odious trainers, you've got to admire the man for trying to make things sparkle again. 'Nothing To Declare' is all controlled Pet Shop Boys beats hiding a yearning heart just about to burst. The icy bitchiness of 'I'm So Happy You Failed' is spiked with venomous sneering vocals and - hey, nu-metal fans! - a bone-crunching guitar grinding away under the itchy robotic rhythm.. The swooping synths and hi-NRG beats of 'The Reason' is enough to make the album a bona-fide mini classic. If you've had your fill of gruesome frat-boy posturing, this is the much-needed emergency antidote. A BIT LIKE? Gary Numan alone with a bottle of vodka and a Moog.



EXLAIM (Canada)
Laptop: Opening Credits

April, 2001
By Rob Bolton

Laptop is the project of one Jesse Hartman, a New York-based musician, actor and filmmaker whose former musical efforts first surfaced in the major-label group Sammy. Not satisfied with this material, Hartman began putting together oddball synth-pop tracks on his IBM think-pad (hence the name), and was all set to release this material until his label (Island) dumped him in the Universal mega-merger. Finally, this material has surfaced thanks to a Norwegian DJ friend of Hartman's that started the label Trust Me, which is set for a slew of Laptop releases this year. The upbeat pop of Sammy has been replaced with a darker, ironic take on the current trend of retro synth-pop. Hartman's lower-octave voice nears deadpan delivery on most of the tracks, reminding me of his fellow New Yorker Stephin Merritt (Magnetic Fields, etc). Hartman, who freely admits the inspiration of Richard Hell and Television, takes digs at the modern world and in one case on an unnamed musician, "I'm So Happy You Failed." The electronics of his music are well produced (thanks to help from Mark Saunders and others) and although this album could have easily been released in the '80s, his well-crafted lyrical subject matter reminds us that Laptop is definitely music for the 21st century. There seems to be quite a little dark electro-pop scene developing these days; Hartman describes his own efforts as "Warhol-ian pop," since his work in the film and video medium allows him to think of his songs as cinematic, rather than simply musical. Overall, Opening Credits is a great way to lament about the irony of the modern world and for added fun he's even included a twisted cover of Billy Joel's "It's Still Rock 'n' Roll To Me." Great stuff.



Launch (Web)
Laptop: Opening Credits

Editor's Rating: 90 (90/100)

March 12 2001

By Michael Lipton

The solo debut from one-man-band New Yorker Jesse Hartman is a smart, chameleon-like release that's informed by a generation (or two) of influences, some of which are easily recognizable, while others are run through Hartman's twisted blender (or, in this case laptop, as he reportedly pieced together the record on an IBM Thinkpad).

Notably more low-fi and offbeat than his previous band Sammy (which peaked with 1996's Lou Reed/Television-influenced Tales Of Great Neck Glory on Geffen), Hartman's tunes may use predominantly "synthetic" instruments--but they come off with a refreshing amount of heart, soul, and, most of all, cynicism. "Greatest Hits" is a first-class, Brit-white-boy-wise-ass nugget of synth-funk, complete with bent synth-bass lines and a Morris Day shuck-and-jive. And you can't help but love the grand anthem "I'm So Happy You Failed," which pokes fun at the fate of a fellow musician ("Word on the street says your second record's dead...I'm sinking to your level...I know I'm going to hell...but I'm so happy you failed"). To drive the sword in to the hilt, on the "I Am The Walrus"-like coda, Hartman changes the "I" to "we." On "End Credits" (Hartman also happens to be an accomplished filmmaker) and "Nothing To Declare," he effects his voice a la Bowie circa "Low" while on "A Little Guilt" ("Nothing like a little guilt to make you feel like you want to die."), it becomes a painful satire of Robert Smith's aching croon.

Hartman makes no bones about things like canned drums--especially on "Another Song," a tuneful gem of a pop song, and his cut-and-paste quilt of sounds and voices turns "The Stranger" one hell of a dance track. For a one-man effort, "No Credits" is anything but one dimensional and recalls a time when "intelligent" didn't translate to "boring"--or sacrificing a groove.



Aversion (Web)
Laptop: Opening Credits

February 15 2001

For whatever reason, the music of the ’80s is remembered more as a pastiche of oddballs, quirk and camp. It seems that the decade that brought us new wave will be ultimately remembered as one long-standing joke in the music industry.

To be fair, that’s only half of what the era was all about. Sure, MTV made it easy to dress up in neon colors and jelly bracelets, but when all the extraneous fashion blunders and tongue-in-cheek singles are swept aside, it did come up with some pretty memorable moments. Laptop breaks back to those very high points of the "me" decade, as the crisp sound of electronically augmented rock’n’roll and slightly off-center themes makes this album a tribute to everything that was great about ’80s techno.

Laptop, the one-man band manned by Jesse Hartman, takes on the air of detached cool that the new-wave acts perfected in their heyday. With guitars that run across a background of low-tech techno noise, Opening Credits achieves the perfect balance between swank indifference and compelling honesty. There’s nothing put on about Laptop’s sound: It’s not a quirky sendup of the cubic ’80s, nor is it a campy Beck-style bastardization of old forms. It’s the real deal.

Hartman sings with a voice reminiscent of David Bowie’s early days, a natural for mixing the understated restraint with a full-bodied delivery. Combined with a sound that crossbreeds techno and live rock in the vein of Gary Numan’s work, Laptop features that near-robotic crispness that was the ’80s calling card. Whether he pulls in extras such as the children’s taunting chorus of "na-na-na-na-na" that adds a devilish flourish to "I’m So Happy You Failed," or the buzzing programmed beats of "Nothing to Declare," Laptop shows that electronic music doesn’t have to be the cold and heartless cliché it so often turns out to be.

While Opening Credits indulges in the aloof hipsterism of the new wave, it doesn’t skimp on the substance in its songs. Whether joyously gloating over another’s downfall ("I’m So Happy You Failed") or mischievously plotting a meeting of the bad seeds ("Bad News"), Hartman shows his emotional detachment is only skin deep. With songs like "End Credits" and "Another Song" that parade a sensitive and very human side to this album, there’s as much depth as any straightforward pop outfit can muster.

Though popular culture would like to simplify the ’80s to the likes of Taco, Falco and Cyndi Lauper, there was a lot more going on there, a fact Laptop reminds everyone with this album.



Amazon.co.uk
Laptop: Opening Credits

By Andrew Mueller

Laptop is American songwriter Jesse Hartman. Opening Credits, his debut album, reveals a prodigious talent, combining the timing of Leonard Cohen, the lyrical wit of the New Radicals' Gregg Alexander and a rarefied sense of sonic mischief that calls to mind Devo, Kraftwerk, Luke Haines' Baader Meinhof project or M, depending on which track you're listening to. Hartman's songs are excerpts from what sounds a wholly disastrous romantic biography, drawled in a richly self-mocking baritone and laced with great gags. There are plenty of quotable lyrical one-liners, notably in "I'm So Happy You Failed", which opens with the immortal couplet "Word on the street is your second record's dead/And you're not doing very well", but Hartman's real strength is the attention to detail in the gloomy, electronic backing tracks: a song whose chorus insists "I'm not the reason you're screwed up", is formidably enhanced by samples of a cuckoo clock. Hartman's firm grasp of pop's essential absurdity is occasionally too tight for his own good. "Another Song"--about how he won't write another song about the girl he's writing the song about--can't quite sustain its somewhat torturous premise, and the deadpan electro version of Billy Joel's "It's Still Rock'n'Roll To Me" is possibly something you needed to be there for, but this is otherwise a marvelous start.



Xfm.co.uk
Laptop: like the 90s never happened

A Review of Opening Credits
By Nick Peters

The brainchild of New Yorker Jesse Hartman, Laptop have produced what is, barring the release of a new Ocean Colour Scene album, the most retro album released this year. But while the guileless dadrockers plunder the classic riffage of the 60s and 70s, Hartman chooses instead the monophonic electro pop of the early 80s. A time when keyboards were still called synthesizers and the height of cool was affecting a mechanical Eurotrash accent a la David Bowie circa 'Scary Monsters'.

Despite the opening 'End Credits' being a mini epic ballad which recalls both Eno and Scott Walker, this is music that doesn't take itself too seriously. There is none of the po-faced posturing and claims of musical purity that is usually associated with the music of nostalgia. Much of this is down to the rich vein of humour running through the album. 'Greatest Hits' finds Hartman making the classic mistake of comparing his new girlfriend to the best parts of his previous conquests and being bemused at why she doesn't take the compliment with good grace "Where are you going? Is it something I said?" Elsewhere the nursery rhyme chant of 'I'm So Happy You Failed' is a delicious slice of schadenfreude delivered with uninhibited school yard viciousness.

Laptop may seem a million miles away from Hartman's previous incarnation as a member of lacklustre Pavement obsessives Sammy, but as the man says on the wonderfully tongue in cheek cover of Billy Joel's AOR classic, 'It's Still Rock n' Roll To Me'.



All Music Guide (Web)
Laptop: Opening Credits

By Bart Bealmear

Ever dreamed of a collaboration between Scott Walker and the Human League? Then Laptop (aka Jesse Hartman) is your man. Laptop's debut full-length is, musically, a throw-back to '80s synth pop, and lyrically both smart and killing, though Hartman may be too self-aware for some listeners. Highlights include "End Credits," a song addressing the role technology plays in terminating a relationship. "Greatest Hit" is all about early-'80s funk, and chronicles a hilarious attempt at complementing a current girlfriend by comparing her to all the ones that came before. The electro cover of "It's Still Rock 'n' Roll to Me" has roots in the Residents bag of tricks, and suggests what Kraftwerk might sound like if they lost their collective mind and started looking to Billy Joel for inspiration. Still, with all the humor and mockery on Opening Credits, nothing can prepare the listener for "I'm So Happy You Failed," a gleeful sing-along that is tongue-in-cheek, but biting nonetheless.



IJamming (Web)
Laptop: Opening Credits

March 20 2001

By Tony Fletcher

Opening Credits includes four songs from User's Guide, remixed or re-recorded, along with seven 'new' compositions of similar mindset - pithy, occasionally sarcastic, quite often hilarious anecdotes about girlfriends and the problems thereof. 'Greatest Hits,' prominently placed between the opening 'End Credits' and 'I'm So Happy You Failed' provides a perfect example. In something of a duet, Hartman tells a new squeeze how she reminds him of past girlfriends. "I know that that sounds bad," he offers nonchalantly; "yes it does," she replies bitterly. In the chorus, Hartman tries assuring her that "You're a greatest hits, you're a 'the best of,' you include only the best cuts of the girls I've been out with." The new girl doesn't buy it and walks. "Hey honey come back," we hear him beg between choruses. "What, so you can talk about your skanky ex-girlfriends?" she replies, her bitter tongue an match for his. As with 'I'm So Happy You Failed,' female backing vocalists team up in the chorus for gospel effect. Yes it's a 'novelty' track, but in the manner of Green Velvet's 'Answering Machine,' of which it reminds me (especially Green Velvet's sparse album version), it's also a great song.

Hartman is a master of the wry couplet. "I've got nothing to declare except my loneliness," he sings over the sound of airport announcements on 'Nothing to Declare.' "You're bad news, let's make some headlines together," he addresses one of his troublesome females on 'Bad News', and on the opening track, he begs his ex to "stop this teenage movie, I'm ready to roll the end credits." He even addresses his songwriting habits with the oh-so-witty line "I'd rather die than write another verse concerning you" on the ballad 'Another Song.' My favorite is on the uptempo 'The Reason,' in which Hartman rejects a girl's claim that "I'm the reason you're screwed up," with the vicious retort that "You were a loon before I even set eyes on you," followed by the provocative use of cuckoo clocks. Talk about a poison pen.

Musically, Laptop is equally dry: processed guitars, drum boxes, synths. You'd expect nothing more. A few tracks rock; most stroll. Other reviewers have honed in on the very '80s nature of this deliberately soulless sound ('Gary Numan alone with a bottle of vodka,' wrote Melody Maker in a 4-star review before it went under); personally, I like to think that this is what Lou Reed might have sounded like with a few more failed love affairs and only a computer for company back in 1967.

Criticisms? But of course; Hartman must be used to them. For one, his delivery is so dry that it was easier to take in an EP's short dose, especially given that three of Opening Credit's best songs ('End Credits,' 'I'm So Happy. . . ' and 'The Reason') were included on User's Guide. Plus, I miss the cover of Wreckless Eric's 'Whole Wide World'; the inclusion of a faked live version of Billy Joel's 'It's Still Rock'n'roll To Me' just doesn't carry the same impact. But anyway you look at it, Opening Credits is an indie-rock gem. And it's unique.

So has Hartman himself failed? Yes and no. One might assume by his far-flung label deal that his acerbic delivery hasn't bought too much loyalty in his New York home town, and he is entering his thirties anything but a star. Then again, he just made the cover of the influential CMJ's New Music Monthly. And press in the UK, where Opening Credits was released in October, has been excellent, if typically hyperbolic, with accolades raining down from the Independent, Q, Melody Maker and NME. Anyway, let his misfortune be our reward. A second album The Old Me versus the New You is already in the can and scheduled for worldwide release this June (you can download the first single 'Back Together' for free.) The third album Accentuate The Positive (do we detect a shift in attitude here?) is scheduled for worldwide release in January 2002. If either new album contains a few songs about his major label experience penned with the same sense of wry animosity that he treats ex-lovers and rival musicians, it could just be a classic.

W(H)INE? An album this bitter, acidic, tart, and dry, with a firm impact, plenty of flavor and a lasting impression deserves a wine to match. Sauvignon Blanc is an ideal companion: try the Dashwood 2000 from New Zealand.



Melody Maker
The Weekly Session
Going deaf for a living with Steve Lamacq

A Review of the single “End Credits” (God Bless Records) on “Opening Credits” (Trust Me Records)

December 1997

By Steve Lamacq

Every so often a record arrives which sounds casually, effortlessly like a classic from the first time it hits the stereo. Last year it was “The First Big Weekend” by Arab Strap – this year, we give you the enigmatic Laptop.

The CD sat around in the pile at home unlistened to for a week, I’m ashamed to say because the sleeve suggested nothing but misery. It looks like it holds the work of an anonymous Belgium techno-industrial duo who still worship the Gods of machinery. In short, it doesn’t look human.

Which is a shame because Laptop – aka Jesse Hartman from Pavement-esque American band Sammy, and assorted friends – sound 100 per cent human and everything that goes with it. It’s romantic, fallible, confused and bruised. It is a new sounding record, from a new London label – the aptly named God Bless Records – that’s put the Session offices and listeners into a bit of a giddy spin. Not since the aforementioned Strap single have we had so many enquiries about a single record.

Hurrah for the lazy-sounding record! This is one of the most natural, but detailed singles of the year (a late contender for the Session’s top singles of ’97).

Recommended for people who don’t want love songs like sticking plasters, but want them like the sound of paper ripping down the middle.



Melody Maker
Single of The Week: Laptop’s “End Credits” (God Bless Records) on “Opening Credits” (Trust Me Records)
January 3, 1998

Admittedly, we’re an excitable lot, reviewers, but I feel like an anthropologist who’s just stumbled across a living Etruscan village in Milton Keynes. If I had a home number for God Bless’ Dave Barker, I’d be demanding photos of the (yup, dreadfully named) Laptop fater than you could say “10 quid’s riding on spectacular haircuts and possibly even shoulder pads”. The only thing more remarkable than these five synthtastic tracks is the fact that, despite being the work of late- Nineties New Yorkers, this EP sounds like…well…Jesus, Where’s the English Synth-Pop Futurists of the Eighties field guide when you need it?

Exactly, I’m talking post-Bowie dramatic song titles (“The Stranger”). I’m talking clipped white-funk guitars. I’m talking Brian Eno and Bill Nelson (“Myth America”). I’m talking scary-future-and-tall-buildings (“21st Century Word”, which probably means talking Gary Numan) and I’m talking a magnificently naff lost-love ballad (“End Credits”, a slowed-down “Heroes” complete with clichéd answerphone-rejection narrative and telephone noises to boot) that practically shoots its own white-backdrop, angular-suit video for you.

Finally, working only from hastily scribbled notes, I’m almost certain that Jesse Hartman’s mannered arch-crooner voice is a perfectly preserved, perfectly ridiculous Phil Oakey (or, failing that, Visage or Fad Gadget, but I’ll need to consult a New Romantic specialist).

If I’ve gotten the carbon-dating tragically wrong and Laptop are normal-looking American alt-rock boys, or worse, peevish Goths. I’ll be a laughing stock at the next Pop Anthropology conference. But in the meantime, God help me, this is inexplicably fab.