The Redwood Plan has just as anxiously been awaiting the release of its new album, Green Light Go, as its fans. Green Light Go was released on Seattle’s Fish The Cat Records on February 15, almost two years after the band first started thinking about a new album. Green Light Go, the band’s sophomore full-length, is the arduous result of a musical reconstruction for the Seattle band. Where The Redwood Plan’s first album, Racing Toward the Heartbreak, was somewhat mathematical, Green Light Go releases the band from its previous formulaic self. The sharp and driving beats remain, but Green Light Go takes the band from standard electronic rock to a more motivated and dynamic sound.

Green Light Go is a deeply layered album, in which each part is fully and equally developed. This type of balance can frequently go amiss when a group tries to stratify its music. So, it’s pretty refreshing to hear the result of a success story! While front woman Lesli Wood wrote the framework for most of the album, band-mates Sydney Stolfus, Betty ST and Larry Brady (Larry is her husband, incidentally) were able to meet the demands of her songwriting and subsequently develop the band’s new sound further to showcase each musician. 

The album seems, in fact, to be a collaborative of each musician’s own personal background. While Wood’s obvious lust for structured punk drives the vocals and momentum in the album, you can hear a guitarist who grew up on metal or a drummer who grew up on his very own thing — and shockingly, it works. Rather than creating an unfocused or overreaching sound, The Redwood Plan manages to synthesize the varied talents of each member to create an energetic, forward-moving album that’s frankly not like anything else I’ve heard coming out of Seattle right now and I’m sold.

I’m usually a total sucker for the first song of an album, but it’s actually third track “The Scenery and Melody” that stuck out the most on my first, second and every subsequent listen of the album. While neither the tempo nor momentum necessarily fade in this song, it somehow refocuses the energy to a lower frequency that provides welcome variety and reprieve.  It’s a well-constructed album with changes in direction throughout while never letting go of that energy.

You can listen to Green Light Go at Bandcamp or check out The Redwood Plan on Facebook.