Why does this chord progression work so well?

Excerpt from the original

Am | E | C | D | F | Am | B7 | E I've been transcribing songs recently and this one chord progression keeps on coming up again and again. I'm not entirely sure why it works so well. The obvious thing would just be the chromatically descending bass line as it nearly always is voiced in that way (like Am, E/G#, C/G, D/F#, etc.) but there has to be more going on than that because not any chords work and even some basic substitutions like Em in place of C don't work nearly as well. I also tried looking at it from a Neo-Riemannian theory standpoint which I'm admittedly not very good at but the chords aren't super closely related from that perspective either. Modes? A mixture of all of the above? Just cause? I've thought heaps about it but it's still spinning me out heaps! Any help is appreciated, thanks.