Francesca Baker
With a name as ethereal as Spektor this lady has the ability to seep into your soul and incite emotion.
Regina Spektor seems to me to be one of those people who can see a dash of colour or a blade of grass and go into raving rhapsodies or deep depressions, the smallest of everyday situations speaking spiralling gothic narratives and being draped in swathes of vocal velvet.
‘Laughing With’ explicitly joins those existentialist dots and is a bewitching musical comment on the simultaneous independence and dependence the human race has with God. Lacking the cascading intensity of other tracks from ‘Far’ this is a disarming song, daedal in what it says rather than being intricately congested.
The whole song is of an all encompassing mood, speaking of God and humanity, being plaintive and elegiac, whilst life affirming, this spectral song has within it the roots of future happiness.