Royal City - Bad LuckIt's important to not let too much time go by between hearings of this song (one of the best of the last ten years, I think).Bad Luck is filthy with percussion, and I think that's part of what makes it so compelling. It jumps to life at the start with a binarily weird beat, some upstrummed acoustic guitar, and a banjo that sounds like a manic steel drum. Then a quick word from the electric guitar, just to wind everything up, and it begins for real. Aaron Riches sings about his own unluckiness, the personification of it, and how it 'comes forth/with a gluttinous mind'. But then, for the chorus, he switches to this gloriously sad (maybe bitter?) phrase, which one can only imagine for whom it's intended: "And you will never know/the places that I go to without you/You will never, ever know." It's unclear to me whether or not he's talking to Bad Luck, or whether he's addressing someone who's not the avatar of malchance--apprising this person of the fact that, despite what they might think, they don't realize the full extent of who Aaron (or the narrator, whatever) is.Also this song is semi-famous for having one of the best and weirdest videos ever, in which a teddy bear and a porcelain doll's relationship is wrecked by a tornado, but salvaged by the teddy bear's persistence and exhumation skills.[BUY Alone at the Microphone]