Rousting us awake from a musical mundanity-induced slumber, Queeva’s “Over Time” slowly but surely starts to fill the air around us with a countrified pop sound that has no equal on the mainstream level this autumn. Certainly, it’s been said by quite a few critics before me that country crossovers are where it’s at in 2022, but I wouldn’t define this single as a Nashville product outright.
There’s too much of an old-world folky twist to the lyrics, and too much of a roots-rock identity assigned to the structure and delivery of the melodies in this track to give it over to the country establishment. Nashville hasn’t produced anything as true to the old guard in the genre as this in a generation or so – at least outside of the underground beat – but my gut tells me that the majority of Queeva fans didn’t get into her work because of her place on some scene’s totem pole. With a vocal as velvety as hers is, this is a singer who needs little beyond a stage, a microphone, and some qualified bar-style instrumentalists to turn more than a few heads.
URL: https://www.queevamusic.com/
As a climactic moment for “Over Time,” the chorus here is where we get a feel for how much energy Queeva and her cohorts are putting into the performance, starting with the rhythm of the music. There isn’t an instrument nor a word out of place in the arrangement of this single, and one could even say that the tightness of the material says more about the focus of this artist than it ever would her rehearsal habits.
Anyone can practice a slick beat or a sensuous harmony into existence, but pulling something together as seamlessly as was done in this release is a step above what the status quo calls for. Instrumentally speaking, there isn’t anything about “Over Time” that would lead us to believe that Queeva doesn’t live in the studio, though the time spent there likely produces more new ideas than it does opportunities to revisit old ones. The aesthetics are retro, but the concepts and the production quality are planted in 2022 and the high-definition standards listeners of this era are used to.
APPLE MUSIC: https://music.apple.com/us/album/over-time/1644443325?i=1644443572
I wasn’t listening to Queeva and her extensive discography as closely as I probably should have been ahead of “Over Time” hitting record store shelves this November, but that’s going to change as the track finds its way into my fall playlist to stay. Queeva’s moxie is telling of the ambitions she still has as a player more than five years into her professional career, and if there’s anything that I want her to focus on specifically for her next release, it’s making her voice as central in the spotlight as she can. She’s become a phenomenal singer where she was already good enough to raise an eyebrow among even the harshest of critics, and in this single, we’re reminded of what brought her name into the headlines to begin with.
Levi Colston