Before Portland, Maine, was a postcard come to life, it was a pretty decent music city. Maybe it still is. Good bands have released important work here. Literally thousands of local records have graced the shelves of Bull Moose over the years. And Enterprise Records. Even Woolworths.

Sam got a T-shirt

Portland’s Best Albums is an archive of works reviewed and cataloged by me, Sam Pfeifle, long-time music writer for the Portland Phoenix, Portland’s alternative-weekly newspaper. The oldest of these go back to original publish dates in 2000.

Sometimes, I even like a new album enough to write something about it. But that hasn’t happened in about three years now. Who knows – maybe I’ll review a record again sometime. Mostly I just want to make sure this stuff isn’t lost. For some of these records, I’m the only one who reviewed them, and all of the Phoenix archives have mostly been lost to posterity now. Lord knows Google can’t find them anymore.

(As of Summer 2019, there are about 95 records here. I have about 500, somewhere, though some are gone for good. Hold tight for lots more. It takes a while to post all these reviews.)