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An outstanding Nick Cave proxy. The song is very personal to the singer-songwriter who overcame Hepatitis C due to over-boozing, but I just love its manly-man sound. The long electric-guitar notes that undulate in the middle of some lines and that are left to tail off end-of-verse make the emotion of this song about passion and self-restraint.
black and white : upper room
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Upper Room is a new British band with a sound that harks back to the best of the 80s with a fresh twist. While the songs in their album deal with the typical alienated-youth themes of apathy, rejection and pain, there isn't a lot of emotional baggage in their sound, thanks to the light arrangement, swirling with catchy guitar melodies and smooth vocal harmonies, and Alex Miller's voice that's at once glum and sanguine. It's like drinking mint tea in bad weather.
half-assed : ani difranco
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Amazing guitar work on this one – raw, hasty, arrogant.
no use crying : embrace
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They weren't exactly the popular choice to record the World Cup anthem for England last summer, but Embrace gets my vote for their rally-the-troops instrumentation that's a more rousing treatment of The Verve.
patience of angels : boo hewerdine
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A great song returns to its owner. Popularized in the early 90s by Eddi Reader, Patience of Angels was composed by this former The Bible frontman. What smart songwriting this song has. She's all Tuesdays and forgetfulness, and a little money saved. The sentence doesn't make any literal sense, but it gives you just the right amount of hint at the character of the subject that it almost forces you to create your own story about her life. The song could have done without the sprinkler-from-outer-space intro, though.
peace and hate : the submarines
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My favorite song in my best-of list. One of the most impressive debut acts of 2006, The Submarines are US couple John and Blake, and their album, Declare A New State, is a collection of songs each of them composed during a prolonged break-up. Theirs is a feel-good-movie rather than a rock-and-roll kind of love story, and the outcome is a sweet and clean work of art, illustrated with vivid lines by their simple lyrics that are tangibly real-world even in their clichés. Take a line from the chorus: Still I love you with all peace and hate. With my series of break-ups and get-back-together episodes in the past, I could have written that!
safe in your arms : beth orton
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somewhere down the river : elf power
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the yeah yeah yeah song : the flaming lips
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The second-best first song from any album of 2006.
you only live once : the strokes
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The best first song off of any album last year.
yours and mine: calexico
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