Idolator

Yesterday, the Emo Sommelier looked back at two of the biggest emo acts of 2006: My Chemical Romance and Panic! At The Disco. After the click-through, part two of his year-in-sullenness, featuring some of his favorite songs of the year.

Panic! and MCR may have been TRL darlings for most of 2006, but there were plenty of other artists who proved that we're in the midst of a vibrant, burgeoning emo scene. These are the songs that music critics were probably enjoying guiltily—or hating on—when they weren't preoccupied by praising the "intensity" of that TV on the Radio record (for other emo picks, including Brand New and Young Love, check out this previous column).

1. blink-182 wrote instantly catchy, terse pop-punk songs, so it would seem natural that blinker Tom DeLonge's first post-band project would be a synthesizer-heavy, prog-rock group primarily influenced by Michael Bay movies and U2's The Joshua Tree, right? We Don't Need To Whisper was utterly pretentious and contrived (in a good way) and produced two songs ("The Adventure" and "It Hurts") that both sounded like an emo band that still hadn't found what it was looking for. Even better, the love songs were probably about Mark Hoppus.

2. Oakland, California's the Matches released a sophomore record that could have been a total conceptual disaster: Singer Shawn Harris considered that if most hip-hop records featured multiple producers, why couldn't a rock record do the same? The result is the unjustly ignored Decomposer, produced by Brett Gurewitz (Bad Religion, Epitaph), Tim Armstrong (Rancid), and Hoppus, among others. Sadly, Pharrell is nowhere to be found.
The Matches - Papercut Skin [MP3, link expired]

3. I'm really not sure how I would react if someone had they told me that Less Than Jake released one of the best emo songs of 2006. But believe it. The veteran punks better known for their ska-influenced shenanigans paired the affecting "Rest Of My Life" with an equally poignant video starring—gasp—child actors (cynicism-suspension is required for watching). While singing the sincerest lyrics of the band's existence ("This is my all time low/ Somehow it feels so familiar/ I feel like letting go/ And every second that goes by/ I'm screaming out for second tries"), Chris Demakes convinces us that even a band that recorded an entire album of Grease covers can be earnest.
Less Than Jake - Rest Of My Life [MP3, link expired]

4. The U.K. act Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly. proved that emo is not an exclusive American export—and that British musicians can come up with just as many awful band names as us Yanks. But this is more than a Dashboard Confessional with a quirky accent; it's the beginning of an international emo movement. What, you thought we had exclusive rights over whiny vocals?

5. Epitaph Records has had a great year. Aside from the Matches record, the Los Angeles punk label could teach the majors a thing or two about what the kids really like: Epitaph released the debut album from Heavens, a side project of Alkaline Trio singer Matt Skiba that sounds uncannily like Interpol and the Psychedelic Furs. And it also put out the Draft's In A Million Pieces, a collection of fist-pumping rockers featuring three of the four original members of the now-defunct Gainesville, Fla., outfit Hot Water Music. Next up in 2007: Motion City Soundtrack, Rancid, Youth Group and Tim Armstrong's solo record.

6. Somehow AFI's Decemberunderground slipped through the year-end cracks, therein making the album title somewhat prophetic. Davey Havok and his gang recorded a cohesive, anthemic seventh studio album that premiered at No. 1, sold 182,000 units in its first week, and featured "Miss Murder," a killer single (pun intended), and "The Missing Frame", perhaps the band's inevitable arena encore.
AFI - The Missing Frame [MP3, link removed]