LAPTOP: FROM START UP TO REBOOT
Ki Smith Gallery
170 Forsyth St.
Friday, July 10, $25, 7:00
www.laptoptheband.com
www.kismithgallery.com
“I’m ready to roll the end credits / Ready for the curtain call,” Jesse Hartman sings on a remastered version of “End Credits,” one of seven tracks on Laptop’s new EP from Hurricane Cove. The original was released in 1997 and appeared on the 2001 album, Opening Credits, but Hartman decided to revisit it after Doublespeak, consisting of Erasure’s Vince Clarke, Blancmange’s Neil Arthur, and producer and musician Benge, teamed up for a surprise cover that came out in May.
In addition to five versions of that track — “Remaster,” “Tower of Babel,” “Director’s Cut,” “The Sweet & Lowdown,” and “The Rise and Fall of a Phone Call” — the EP includes covers of Blancmange’s “Living on the Ceiling” and Erasure’s “Love to Hate You” as a kind of thank-you.
The curtain is not quite ready to close on Laptop and Hartman, who will be performing a rare live show on July 10 at Ki Smith Gallery on the Lower East Side, a thirtieth anniversary homecoming that will feature songs from their heyday, 1997–2003, accompanied by visuals from multidisciplinary artist Anne Senstad.
In addition, for the first time in more than twenty-three years, Laptop will be releasing a record of new material, On This Planet, in September, featuring such tracks as “Confused,” “Xanadu,” and “Squirrel-a-Bug.” It’s a very different kind of album from Laptop, with more pop elements, but they still capture the state of the world, and the band itself, starting with the opening track, in which Hartman explains, “It’s getting weirder and weirder / on this planet.”
Yes it is.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]