Pitchfork

Pitchfork's headlining news story is wrong. It should read: "Music industry faces severe shortage of band names." And the subheader: "Discovery of three separate Palomas sparks panic." Having recently railed against a bandname, I must make an amendment: the only thing worse than an unoriginal or questionable bandname is an overused one. Sure, maybe one of these bands has a fondness for the town set 120 miles east of San Francisco. Perhaps another is obsessed with Pablo Picasso's daughter. But really, three Palomas?

The question is, which one of the following is the Paloma at hand? (See below for answer.)

A:

Even while fronting Dizzy Monk, Chad Anderson never felt like a he was part of a band. They were moderately successful, picking up stragglers from Phish and Dave Matthews Band shows, and even gaining admirable reviews from hairy, out-of-touch music reviewers. But although their onstage chemistry was potent and possibly overflowing with noxious vapor, Anderson was dissatisfied with the other members of Dizzy Monk. After all, a jam band can't survive on strong onstage rapport alone; they must be best friends backstage, too. How can you play with guys who won't even share a joint with you?

Anderson attributes the dissolution of the band to the greed of Dizzy Monk's other members. Apparently, all the major record companies wanted a piece of Dizzy Monk, and everyone but Anderson was ready to sell out. Another source suggests that Anderson didn't like the band's name, which had been chosen by another member. Sure, it was a pretty good generic jam bandname, but it just wasn't innocuous enough. (Full disclosure: I'm the latter "source," and I'm not very reliable.) So Anderson chose the moniker Paloma and decided to make Christian music. This six-song EP is his first post-Dizzy Monk release.

Let's just say: this record is skunked, dude. The easygoing opener, "Take Care of Me," is written from the first person perspective of the Virgin Mary. "Waaaaaaaaiting," croons Anderson, drawing the word out to make the listener really feel the waiting. "Waiting for a child." The all-acoustic number then plods forth with the story of the birth of Jesus, like we don't already know it. "Daily Sisyphus" isn't much better. With lyrics that essentially denounce all Greek mythology ("Jesus was the daily Sisyphus"), the track is no more than an exercise in excessive percussion, in both amount and duration. "P, What Happened to You?," meanwhile, is a banjo-fueled letter to Pontious Pilate, and "Spare Time" is an orchestral plea for missionaries. A short instrumental is the only bearable track here-- because it has no lyrics, of course.

B:

When Vancouver folk-rock trio 54-40 released their debut album in 1986, they were compared to R.E.M. Kind of like Travis are compared to Radiohead. But as R.E.M. made increasingly accessible pop music, 54-40 became gradually harder, only to have a song of theirs covered by Hootie and the Blowfish. Now they've done what so many bands have done before them: hired a lead female vocalist and learned how to use a drum machine. The resulting side project is named Paloma, which means "dove" in Spanish.

So, yes, this is groovy. The easygoing opener, "Take Care of Me," rides on watered down trip-hop beats and Coco Love Alcorn's house vocals. "Waaaaaaaaiting," booms Alcorn, drawing the word out to make the listener really feel the waiting. But I didn't wait; I skipped forward. "Harness the Zebras" marries obviously digital replications of tribal instruments with a more upbeat, but equally derivative trip-hop beat. "We are not lovers," shrieks Alcorn. "I wonder if we could." "Gas Station Woman" doesn't feature Alcorn's voice, fortunately, but the song wanders the same mellow-danceable beats as every other track here.

C:

Paloma-- aka Laurent Vaissiere-- is the culmination of years of home recording and a fascination with the Go-Betweens. In '98, Vaissiere roped in a drummer and engineer to actually record his tossed-off numbers to something better than his "shitty 4-track recorder." But the self-produced and released CD didn't gain Paloma any attention until Vaissiere put the album up on the Internet. Because a million other people weren't doing the same thing, his work got noticed. Now he's re-recorded six of those songs for this EP, Paloma's first official release.

The easygoing opener, "Take Care of Me," is written from the perspective of a father-in-waiting. "Waaaaaaaaiting," croons Vaissiere, drawing the word out to make the listener really feel the waiting. "Waiting for a child." An acoustic guitar strums along pleasantly, accompanied by a single beat and occasionally accentuated by toy percussion. "Daily Sisyphus" is also, like the rest of this album, an acoustic-driven little ditty. Again, the drumbeats and guitarwork are impossibly simple, and neat little sound effects add the necessary depth and uniqueness. But the chorus is the shining moment, when the song turns into a fun stomper fit for a kindergarten march.

The EP never reaches that point again. "Gas Station Woman" is a short, pleasant instrumental, but not particularly noteworthy. "Harness My Zebras" is the token pre-programmed-beat song, during which Vaissiere weeps, "When we are getting closer/ Closer means too close." Hmm. There's also the banjo-fueled "P, What Happened to You?" which includes some annoying whistling, and the closer, "Spare Time," which sounds as if it were recorded in a nursery for tots.