It has long puzzled me why some artists receive more than their share of recognition while others, more deserving, get less. Fortunately, in the case of the newly issued Vivian Leva disc, we're only at the beginning of that process, which for all we know may end happily.

Nonetheless, hearing Leva -- a name new to me, though her parents, James Leva and Carol Elizabeth Jones, are known on the oldtime scene -- one can't help thinking of a contemporary of hers, at best a developing talent, who has been the beneficiary of a lot of overheated praise over the past couple of years. While there is no point in naming the competition here, it is fair to say that with Time is Everything Leva has declared her arrival in spectacular fashion via, paradoxically, a seemingly modest statement of the familiar.

Modest because Leva isn't reinventing any musical wheel -- this is, more or less, classic country -- but this is a journey carried atop of a smooth-running vehicle that pushes you contentedly toward a wished-for destination. To be sure, as country Leva's is a post-1970s Emmylou Harris variant, in other words a consistently smart one. Old honkytonk songs, God love 'em (as do I), may have been known for their truth but not always for their IQ. Still, the most in-the-tradition original number (and most cuts are Leva compositions) is the exquisite "Why Don't You Introduce Me as Your Darlin'," which gives the impression of miraculous arrival out of six or seven decades ago, from another country and century. Any era in which country was still proud of itself -- awhile ago, to be clear -- would happily claim it.

Leva sings beautifully, and the spare, acoustic production (by Leva, Riley Calcagno and Joseph Dejarnette) alternately chills and warms. Hints of other musical influences dart in and out, most openly in her banjo-driven interpretation of an obscure traditional, "Cold Mountains" (learned from an Alan Lomax field recording of Texas Gladden), implicitly in the allusion in the title tune to the late Sandy Denny's (decidedly un-country) "Who Knows Where the Time Goes." "Wishes & Dreams" is not an imitation Carter Family song, but one who does not know what the Carters were about could not have written this, an emotionally charged song for a heart burdened by darkness but ready to find a brighter landscape.

Albums like Time is Everything don't come along often enough. Whatever the genre, they refuse to surrender their secrets within the first listening or two. Hearing after hearing, revelations great and small seem to pop out of the grooves or their equivalent, and the sound feels as if deepening into some unanticipated wisdom. I guess that's one definition of art. There's something like it here in this deceptively understated vision of romance, heartbreak and time's inexorable passing.