A slight shift in musical style makes for a refreshing sound that relays strong stories.
Josiah Leming, the man who goes by the stage moniker of Josiah and the Bonnevilles, has been honing his craft since a young age: he learnt to play the piano at eight and wrote his first song aged 13, but it was only with 2023’s Endurance that it felt like people started to sit up and take notice of him. That recognition led to a sold-out tour and his Grand Ole Opry debut in 2024, then came the signing to the prestigious Rounder Records, which is releasing his follow-up album, As Is. There was no shortage of material for the album, as the final 10 tracks were honed down from almost 100 that he had written with impressive collaborators like Natalie Hemby and Joel Little.
“I’ve been staying out / And off the internet / Working on the bike / I ain’t finished yet,” Leming opens on Good Boy, the struggles of everyday living and his desire to reconnect with a more analogue world coming through his world-worn vocals, even if the album sees him going more electric than ever before. He’s all too aware that when you hit on a winning formula, as he did with the more unplugged Endurance, the easiest thing to do would be to repeat it, but thinking about live shows, he knew that it would have been “hard to keep [his] excitement to go out on the road with another acoustic record”, so he bravely shifted his sound to include more electric guitar and it certainly works, never feeling incongruous to his lyrics.
Carolina Heart is the classic tale of the one that got away, and in this case, it’s a girl from North Carolina’s Outer Banks who went on to practice law in Chapel Hill, but Leming’s heart was never able to let her go: “Don’t you know I love you and I always will”. Youth and Dreams and Going Gone both find him reflecting on a relationship from his youth; “Home run ball / My last paycheck / That shot of Jim / This cigarette / Teenage years / Gas in the tank / The plans we made,” he warbles on the later, while Hell Without Flames, a moving portrait of the everyday life of the working class, cuts to the core as Leming’s gravely delivery helps to further express the bone weariness described in the lyrics. On One Day at a Time, he proves he’s learned from the wreckage of a past relationship and now, although alone, is trying to better himself: “I’m learning not to hate myself / One day at a time.”
Where It Starts is a clever look about how most things in life are the result of heartbreak, even becoming a musician: “Now it’s lights up, curtains down / Travelling the world around / A million songs with a million sounds / But they’re really all the same about / A young girl breaking a young boy’s heart.” The harmonica-heavy Mountain Girl, where Leming yearns for a simple life with the one he loves: “I’ve been looking for a love like a phone stuck to a wall / Where she wraps the spiral cord around her finger while we talk”, features some of the best lyrics of an all-around top-notch album. The title track is as much meditative spoken-word poetry as it is a song, Leming narrating the story of a down-on-their-luck couple using their last 20 dollars to buy a beaten-up secondhand guitar, leaving them with little but love to hold them together.
“Being a regular person, working, trying your best. I think that’s something to be proud of,” Leming reflected on the importance of working-class people and community, and with As If’s 10 songs, he has honoured them and their stories, shining a light on an often quietly overlooked section of society that’s struggling as hard as ever in our modern times. And hey, maybe if we’re really lucky, he’ll drop the other 90ish tracks that didn’t make the cut.
