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