1. Thank you very much for your time! Before we introduce your new release to our readers – what kind of drink would you recommend to sip on while they listen to your new music?
For better or worse, I do kind of like to drink, did a lot of bartending before my first record deal, and used to own a bar in NYC too…so I have a lot of thoughts on this matter – going to give you a choice:
1. Do what I do when I go to a bar – straight vodka with lots of ice and some olives (blue cheese olives if they have ‘em). Strong drink for some intensely funny and semi-dark themes in the songs.
2. A black or white Russian. I’m digging coffee liquor lately. In the spirit of the movie “The Big Lebowski”. Which is also funny and semi-dark.
3. 99 Bananas on ice. Super strong. Tropical. This album was partly recorded in the Caribbean. So it fits.
4. Stick some vodka or rum in an EGG CREAM (a classic New York chocolate milk soda).
5. Have a Beefeater gin and OJ with a slice of lemon like my older brother, who was a huge influence on my music growing up.
2. Please tell us about Laptop and your new album „Indie Hero”.
“Indie Hero” is actually the new single, and On This Planet is the name of the upcoming album, out this spring. Laptop started years ago when we were signed to Island Records, but this time around I wanted to take the reins myself—so I launched Hurricane Cove Records to release everything on our own terms. What began as a solo experiment in deadpan romance and synth-pop anxiety is now a father–son band, with my 19-year-old son Charlie as my co-frontman. And this new album isn’t just about me—it’s also about the world we’re living in now. The weirdness, the creatures, the chaos, the thirst. Songs like “Weirder,” “Additional Animals,” and “Thirst” all revolve around this feeling that the planet itself is tilting, and we’re just trying to stay human while everything gets stranger.
3. We live in times of many conspiracy theories. Which harmless theory do you wish were true? (For example Dinos living inside Earth or E.T. living in a home in California or something else)
Part of me hopes the simulation theory is true. It would be comforting to know that all my worst decisions were actually just a glitch and perhaps they were’t really my decisions after all. Especially, the choice to date a certain person that must have been auto-generated during a system malfunction.
4. What fashion style or brand do you think would best describe your music?
There was a moment years ago when the great graffiti artist Steve Powers (ESPO) made me a custom fluorescent yellow raincoat covered in his patented characters — and I’m pretty sure it even said “Laptop” on it. That, honestly, is the perfect fashion description of my music: something bright, strange, emotional, a little chaotic, and handmade by someone brilliant who sees the world sideways. If that raincoat ever became a full fashion line, I’d wear nothing else.
5. Tell us more about your songs! Topics! Message!?
The recent songs—“Weirder,” “Additional Animals,” “I Don’t Know,” and now “Indie Hero”—are about the world getting stranger and more unrecognizable, and the way we keep trying to stay human inside that weirdness. Some are about desire, some about identity, some about the creatures in our heads, and some about fame, failure, and the myths we inherit. They’re funny, sad, and slightly unhinged, like postcards from a future we’re all pretending we understand.
6. Besides music, do you have any special talents or hobbies? (or what do you do for your day job) and share a highlight?
I’m also a filmmaker. I produced a film that made it into Sundance, directed my own feature House of Satisfaction, and my short Happy Hour somehow won the Berlin Film Festival — I’m still not sure how that happened. Now most of my directing ends up in the strange, slightly unhinged mini-movies I post on Instagram every two days on @latpoptheband. It’s like having my own TV channel where nothing makes sense but everything is emotionally true.
7. Name 5 things we all should know about you as an artist?!
1. I’ve failed in more interesting ways than most people succeed. And succeeded in more interesting ways than most people failed.
2. Every song I write is a romance between hope and self-doubt.
3. I believe in emotional maximalism and practical minimalism.
4. I make music like someone who grew up worshipping heroes and then met them. And then was sorry I met them.
5. If something feels slightly wrong, that’s usually the right direction. Or maybe the wrong direction. I’m still not sure.
8. Tell us about your path as an artist to date…. who or what has given you the biggest motivation in this regard??
My artistic path is basically a series of left turns. I started in a ’90s indie band called Sammy, got signed, got dropped, started Laptop, got signed again, got dropped again, made films, opened bars/clubs, had mild existential crises, and now I’m back with my son in the band like it’s some kind of emotional sequel. The best sequel ever. Godfather 2. My biggest motivation? Honestly, stubbornness, plus a few musical heroes who made me believe that failure was actually part of the job description. And now Charlie — because once your kid joins your band, you can’t exactly retire. So all is good.
9. What is a question you’d like to answer, but never been asked in an interview before?! Please share that and the answer as well please
Q: Why did you come back from the dead? And when you did, how on earth did you record 80 new songs in five days in Valencia — meaning you now owe the universe six more albums?
A: Well, it was after 20 years of not really playing music, and it was towards the end of Covid. After being cooped up, I took a trip to Nevis just to get the hell out. And then, by pure accident, at the hotel’s tropical bar, I met Mike Desmerais — the drummer who worked with Eno in the early days. We got to talking and suddenly we were onstage at a tiny beach bar. I felt like I was in Talking Heads at Compass Point in 1980. And just like that, I was singing again for the first time in years. Something cracked open. It was like someone had quietly hit the “reboot” button on my life.
A few months later I flew to Valencia for what was supposed to be a small experiment — maybe two songs, maybe none. Instead, the creative faucet broke. I recorded 80 songs in five days, which is medically questionable, and now apparently I’m making six more albums whether I like it or not. It felt like the universe was saying, “Welcome back. Here’s your homework.”
Coming back from the dead was accidental. The flood of music wasn’t planned either. But once the door opened, the songs just didn’t stop walking in.
10. What is your Instagram link?
@laptoptheband – of course.