FEB 6, 2007 Pop-tinged tunes, crafted with the precision of Brill building classics filtered through The Beatles and the Malibu/Topanga Canyon sound of the late 70s.

13 MP3 Songs
POP: Beatles-pop, POP: Quirky



Details:
buva is the band moniker for Tom Wolfe, a multi-instrumentalist singer/songwriter with a penchant for slightly leftfield pop. If the name sounds unfamiliar, the songs most definitely are not. buva may, in fact, already be the soundtrack to your life, or at least to TV shows and movies you have watched. His pop-tinged tunes, crafted with the precision of Brill building classics filtered through The Beatles and the Malibu/Topanga Canyon sound of the late 70s have been featured on such tastemaking shows as The O.C., One Tree Hill, Smallville and Boston Public. Thats a long way from the Pennsylvania Dutch country where Wolfe grew up, listening to records with the obsession of a true believer and playing in bands. The Beatles, ELO, Todd Rundgren, Queen, XTC, and The Who were all important to me, Wolfe says. I was one of those music geeks who read the liner notes of every album. Such attention to detail and insider baseball knowledge paid off when he relocated to Los Angeles and met Peter Farrelly, soon to be of the Farrelly Brothers fame, who used one of his songs in Dumb & Dumber and asked him to supervise the music for the film Kingpin. I told him I didn't know what a music supervisor did, Wolfe recalls. He said, Just find me great songs. His obvious gift for finding the right song to underscore the mood quickly led to him being in demand with credits including The 40 Year Old Virgin, Donnie Darko, and Theres Something About Mary among many others. While having intimate knowledge of the corporate side of music may seem like a primer for the business, such close quarters actually have to be put aside for the creation of his own songs. The two co-exist and operate independently of each other, Wolfe says. In 2006, he scored the indie film Special, a psychological thriller starring Michael Rappaport that made its debut at Sundance in January. The film was purchased for distribution by First Look to be released later this year. Wolfe moonlighted on his own music, eventually sharing his demos with producer Andy Chase (Ivy, Tahiti 80) who loved what he heard and came on board for buvas 2003 debut, a five-song EP titled Daydream. The songs sparkled with the perfect mixture of textured lo-fi pop and classic California layered harmonies. The catchy tunes lived up to the title s name zipping by in a too-short reverie. The EP gained notice from Pete Yorn, Rami Jaffe and Doc Dauer, who included one of the tracks on their Trampoline Records Greatest Hits Volume II collection (which included tunes by Liz Phair and the Wallflowers) to TV producers Josh Schwartz and David E. Kelley. Daydream also received play from renowned DJ Nic Harcourt from KCRWs Morning Becomes Eclectic. buva's new album, All This Humming shows an artist in prime form. The 13 new tracks were mixed by Bryan Cook (Inara George, Nous Non Plus, Michael Andrews) at Michael Andrews Elgonix studio and feature guitar work by Lyle Workman (Beck, Todd Rundgren, Frank Black, Sting). All This Humming is more stripped-down than Daydream, without any loss of momentum. The textures are still there, though more subtly. The songs faithfully reflect the spectrum of love and loss. Wolfes lyrics and vocals have more emphasis. Wolfe says, The lyrics had always been secondary for me but on these songs I paid closer attention to them. He sites Andy Partridge, Rundgren, Neil Finn, and Elvis Costello as wordsmiths who influenced his own approach. He proves to be equally adept at setting a scene or plumbing the emotional depths as his heroes. And as with Costello and Partridge, his lyrics often cleverly belie the classic bounce and drive of their pop gem settings, creating an appealing friction. Undoubtedly the new songs will be popping up at just the right moments in the fictional scenarios of TV and film and in the nonfiction scenes of real life.