REVIEW: Semi Trucks—Georgia Overdrive (2025)
Slacker rock never dies. It just finds it really difficult to get out of bed before April in any given year, okay?
Semi Trucks leader Brendan Sepe, appropriately had a solo bedroom project going on in 2021, and released an album of lo-fi tunage called Vs. California, but as promising as that rather veiled-sounding record was, turning it into a real band has evidently moved the whole thing up several notches.
From first track to last, Georgia Overdrive has that drawly careworn american alt rock schtick going on, beloved of so many guitar bands down the years. You know the deal. A bit of Yo La Tengo here, some Pavement and Sonic Youth there, the almost inevitable whiff of early Velvet Undergound. You won’t come here expecting sonic reinvention, more of a taking of the baton, and running into town loaded with tunes that totally fit the bill.
So you have a choice really: you can be a grumpy old bagpuss, saying it sounds like X,Y, and Z, and go back to the old classics you’ve heard 4000 times, or you can dig in to a banquet of quality tunes built from the same building blocks. Flower kicks off proceedings with its two chord I’m Waiting For The Man attack, and you know exactly where this is heading.
And as if to fully illustrate what difference having a full band upgrade actually makes, we then get a killer remake of song from the debut, Motorbike Riding Star. Then bassist Bronwyn Bradshaw takes the mic, and delivers her honeyed tones on one of the record’s standouts, Darker Than The Night, a song I would have instantly been in love with 40 years ago, had it existed then, and am pretty smitten with now, thanks for asking.
Recent single, Lou And Edie is a perfectly spirited jump around indie rocker (as the video reflects), but what it really needs is a speaker ripping J Mascis riff over the top to really deliver what it’s shooting for, but points for trying.
Other standouts once again bring Bronwyn to the fore—notably the hushed Mustang, and Hey Lover, where she sounds like she’s fronting a 1991-era Teenage Fanclub, which is precisely as great as it sounds.
The beautiful, sleepy closing track Birthday Song combines the two voices exquisitely, giving the band more of a shoegazey vibe—especially following on from the blissed out Somewhere Far Away.
What these contrasting styles illustrate is the band doesn’t stay in a particular mode for long. There’s a restlessness apparent in the way they switch lanes, as if they audibly hate being defined as like that or that band. They very evidently do sound like certain bands, but almost too many for you to pigeon hole them too specifically. They cherry pick the sounds and textures they want, and craft songs around them—a totally fair approach for any new band finding their way. My takeaway, though, is that they’ve totally nailed the slower ones—there are a bunch of great ones here—but need to up their game a notch on the rockers. They’re not far off greatness, but you can tell they could push on beyond this.
