Dorks And Losers

The beauty of Amer­i­can Idol, other than see­ing peo­ple pur­pose­fully make fools of their non-singing abil­i­ties through those first few episodes of any sea­son, is that it affords aspir­ing singers the power to get noticed. In such a hard-to-even-get-through-the-door kind of indus­try, so just telling peo­ple your name is a big boost.

For Sea­son Seven early round reject Josiah Lem­ing that expo­sure worked but only on his terms. Show pro­duc­ers rec­og­nized his tal­ents, but Lem­ing soon real­ized that the show was merely “glo­ried karoake” and that if he really wanted to make his own music he could no longer do it on Amer­i­can Idol.

While the details of the fall­out are sketchy, the Ten­nessee native’s dreams are com­ing to fruition with the release of his debut EP Angels Under­cover.

One of nine chil­dren, Lem­ing dropped out of high school at 17 to pur­sue music, and he has no regrets. “It’s the only thing I want to do. I’d rather die in a ditch some­where than not be able to make music. There are no other options for me. Music is my way of get­ting things out. It has saved my live many times” (press release).

Leming’s EP teaser reveals the mood­i­ness and rebel­lious­ness that he felt dur­ing the life­time of grow­ing up in rural Mor­ris­town, Ten­nessee. He exter­nal­izes much of this pent-up rage and any feel­ings of inad­e­quacy in the anthem “Theysay” through an ini­tial sat­is­fac­tory soft­ness but later fum­ing explo­sion in the repeat­ing lyrics “they can burn in hell.”

One of the con­tin­ual bat­tles Lem­ing fights is whether to con­vey his con­fused emo­tions either pas­sively or aggres­sively. The pseudo-ballad “This Cigar” divulges the alter­na­tive road many of us go down to fight or indulge our per­sonal demons, through the inhales and exhales of cig­a­rettes or the sips and gulps of alco­hol. That might seem like the eas­i­est and cliché solu­tion, but the alter­na­tives (“To Run”) aren’t so attrac­tive either.

It’s unfor­tu­nate that Lem­ing had to live with hard­ships because his sit­u­a­tion isn’t all that dif­fer­ent from mil­lions of oth­ers. For­tu­nately for Lem­ing, he found the one out­let that he could escape from those very pains and reach out to oth­ers so they can search and find their own way out.

The semi­au­to­bi­o­graph­i­cal title track bares his life in a brief but pas­sion­ate nut­shell. The future strug­gles with his fam­ily and his faith are there for all to see. It’s quite uneasy to hear such dis­tress (“There’s a place that’s filled with flames / And it’s call­ing out my name / Cause I don’t believe in heaven”), but there is solace in know­ing that Lem­ing has found his voice.

[photo via Sneak Attack Media]
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Track list:

1. Arc­tic Out­cry Wind
2. Angels Under­cover
3. Theysay
4. This Cigar
5. To Run

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