Monday, December 22, 2008

My Favorite Albums from Portland, OR in 2008

In spite of having spent countless hours in 2007 ruminating over what lists to post to the ol' Jamboree and what their contents would be, I ultimately buckled under the weight and posted nothing. Partly, this was because 2007 was my first year writing my weekly column on local music (entitled "Our Town Could Be Your Life") for The Portland Mercury, one of the alternative weeklies here in Portland, OR. It's a real privilege to be given an excuse to dig so deep into local culture, but it is most definitely time-consuming.

It feels a little lazy to do this, but let's call it efficient efficient instead: I am posting a link here to my column for this week, in which I wrote on my favorite Portland albums of 2008.

Come Thursday, when next week's paper goes live, I will also link to my column on my favorite Portland shows by local bands.

This will free me up to spend a little time on my prospective Jamboree post covering non-Portland music.

I imagine it's a given, but I am quite the Portland music zealot and - although this could be partially attributed to the increased opportunities I have to discover and interact with local artists - there were honestly more albums that I loved from Portland this year than there were from the rest of the world combined.

For anyone who would like to delve further into Stumptown/Bridgetown/PDX/Portland (or, rather, my opinions thereof), I am including links below to my Best of Local Music columns from last year:

My Top 5 Portland Albums of 2007

My Top 5 Portland Shows of 2007

Best,
Cary Clarke

8 comments:

Paul said...

Man, I really want to come up to Portland, Cary. Just seems like good music, parks, and compost heaps. Did I tell you that I talked to Mike Clark for about 20 mins at a Jicks concert this past April (maybe March)? Really nice guy, and he told me all about his restaurant.

I've gotta pick up that Au record. Everything I've heard off of it I've enjoyed.

What'd you think about this year's Malkmus and Blitzen Trapper records?

Colin McCormick said...

No Blitzen Trapper? Are they too much a national acto to be considered a Portland band?

Colin McCormick said...

Acto? Yeah, I stand by it.

Cary said...

Paul, we would be delighted by your visit and you are of course welcome to come anytime. Word to the wise - do it before Fall '09 while we're all still there! Never been to to Mike Clark's restaurant, but I can confirm that he is a nice guy from a similar post-concert encounter.


As for Furr, the Blitzen Trapper record, I liked it, and loved parts of it, just not as much as the records I put on my list. The Au album, for example, is totally my favorite 2008 album, all geography aside. But, yes, BT are most definitely a Portland band.

Some Honorable Mention PDX 08 albums for me would include, additionally:
Benoit Pioulard - Temper
Eat Skull - Sick To Death
Horse Feathers - House With No Home
Parenthetical Girls - Entanglements
Starfucker - S/T
Talkdemonic - Eyes at half Mast
The Shaky Hands - Lunglight

Anyone else have any localist lists? I'd be interested to know more about other folks' cities' music communities.

And what's acto?

Colin McCormick said...

Acto was a typo. But then it wasn't because I decided to just go with it.

Thomas McMahon IV said...

I'm gonna have to check these out. The only one of them I've heard is White Hinterland. Wasn't that EP, though; it was a full length that I believe was released this year. Good stuff. Colin, our old schoolmate Dave Depper plays bass on the album.

Cary, I've been considering doing an L.A. bands list. I may do it, but I still need to do an albums list.

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