Just the Name, Repeated

Natasha Khan wrote Laura for a friend who died young, and it sounds exactly like that—the piano part almost bare, the vocal completely exposed, nothing decorative in any of it. From The Haunted Man (2012), it stands apart from the album’s more theatrical moments by refusing ornamentation entirely: no reverb wash, no layered harmonics, just a voice in a room saying a name. The grief in it is direct in a way that most songs about grief avoid being. It doesn’t reach for consolation or meaning. It just stays there.