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*** Laptop

OPENING CREDITS

(Trust Me)

ñBefore 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 lms 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.

— Tony Ware