Queeva - How Do You Know
QUEEVA
How Do You Know
Self-released
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It's exceedingly hard in 2019 to hit the country-pop sweet spot, in which a female singer avoids excessive cuteness and rhythmic feebleness and creates 
memorable melodies that don't cloy. Thankfully, newcomer QUEEVA brilliantly threads that needle, as this debut album proves. Putting together nine relentlessly happy, hopeful songs runs the risk of coming across as Pollyannish. But in this young girl's songwriting and voice, it is an outlook that is born of self-awareness, realism and connection. She is a gifted writer whose images sting the senses, but there's something particularly gripping about her voice. It communicates both passion and softness in its tone, trusting and world-weary all at once. This is one of the best and freshest albums I've heard in a long time. From start to finish, it firmly held my interest.
Hailing from Chicago, QUEEVA (Gaelic for ‘gentle,’ ‘beautiful’ or ‘precious’) was raised with five siblings in a creative Irish clan speaking both Gaelic and English and dividing her time between the USA and Ireland. For the past six years she’s been developing her singing and songwriting skills under the guidance of Nashville-based singer Jamie O’Neal, who not only produced this debut album but also co-wrote all nine songs with QUEEVA and various Music Row tunesmiths, including Rob Crosby, Stephanie Bentley, Minnie Murphy and Shaye Smith. The album features country-pop instrumentation and production that showcases QUEEVA’s powerful vocals and impressive songwriting. She keeps it personal, without over-sharing or quaint evasion, in the well-crafted, songs that tell tales of friendship, far-away places, and most often the bitter sweetness of heartbreak, self-belief and the precarious journey of young love.
Opening with fiddle and softly plucked mandolin How Do You Know? maturely tackles the age-old predicament of how someone so young and inexperienced can know that this is true love, echoing the open-hearted innocence of 1960s pop. She offers encouragement to fellow teens who might be suffering from self-doubt and low self-esteem in the buoyant Stand Out and Who You Really Are. Country fiddle and a Celtic vibe underlines Going Back, a rotating photo album of bright memories and golden nostalgia that winds along an open road as she recalls time spent in her mother’s homeland of Galway, Ireland. There are more memories of the Emerald Isle in the wonderfully-written Young, Wild And Free, an impeccably produced piece of fluff, that tickles a soft spot in me. This talented young lady seeks to genuinely connect with the listener, and does so through her intimate vocal delivery, journal-esque lyricism, and controlled balance between musical restraint and inhibition.
She does get a little sassy with Close To You and shows she can handle a romantic break-up with You’re Still Here as she moves past precocity toward the full bloom of artistry: the singing is deeply self-assured, and the songs are grounded in true emotional terrain. And that’s not bad for someone so young. Having only recently turned 15, QUEEVA’s debut album reveals an emotional depth you may not expect from a youngster. Her songs are simply breath-taking, possessing melodies many of her peers would give their left arm for. She’s genuine, charming, and her passion for music and songwriting comes through powerfully in performance. Quite simply HOW DO YOU KNOW is a superb album and one that announces the arrival of a genuine talent.
July 2019