NYC artist Laptop has delivered a winter transmission that sits oddly and perfectly within their catalog: a deadpan, jazz-robotic recreation of Tom Waits’ 1978 classic, “Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis.” This version is equal parts heartbreak and smirk, performed as if a soul adrift at 2 AM in search of a working payphone, capturing the essence of a holiday season that has gone wrong while stubbornly clinging to the hope that things might just go right. For frontman Jesse Hartman, who revived the band with his son Charlie, this song is deeply personal, having played it since he was 13 and noting it was “the blueprint for Laptop” that showed him how to mix sadness and humor.
While both Laptop and Waits are obsessed with doomed characters, Hartman’s version departs from Waits’s gravel-and-whiskey delivery, leaning into Laptop’s signature swing between warmth and machinery: jazz chords, cold synths, more groove, and Hartman’s dry, controlled, emotionally sideways vocal. The basic tracks were recorded in Valencia with Iñaki Ariste Aznar and drummer Mike Desmerais, with Hartman finishing the song in New York this Thanksgiving. Family members, including Odetta Hartman (backing vocals) and Camellia Hartman (violin), fill the edges of the arrangement with warmth, contrasting the icy synth pad and the rhythmic bed that feels like a jazz band learning to operate inside a drum machine.
Though this is a standalone offering, outside the song cycle leading to their 2026 album On This Planet, it fits the themes Hartman has been exploring lately: aging, reinvention, and the personal fictions we tell ourselves to get through the night. The holiday backdrop adds a chill, making it a perfect Christmas song for people who can’t quite afford to believe in Christmas. The final confession, “I need the money to pay my lawyer,” lands with a mix of dry humor and real ache, concluding one of the great American monologues with unsentimental elegance.