What you are about to read is a bunch of sentences about how cool Walt Disco are. Because, seriously, after making waves in Glasgow’s underground scene with their first album, Unlearning, in 2022, and their second, The Warping, in 2024, their third, self-titled LP transports us back to the band’s unique universe with the same gothic elegance and sonic dynamism, but this time elevating their vision to transformative, deeply moving new highs.
If you loved the artsy Adam Ant vibes of Unlearning and early classics like ‘Cut Your Hair’, or the seductive and swirly sequel The Warping, this is a natural next step, and a bold new era, emphasised by the self-titled nature: this is their third album but their first to wholly wear their name. Demonstrating, if you like, the band Walt Disco were always meant to be. That sounds like such a cliché way to describe a new album, but it feels well deserved.
Before our first taste of this third album dropped with the effortlessly cool ‘Coup de Foudre’, Walt Disco were prided not only on their moody, digital sonics, but also on the self-expressive nature of their lyrics. Their third release follows lead singer Jocelyn’s journey through gender dysphoria, HRT and transitioning. It is a journey that becomes richer and more kinetic the further you get into the album.
We start with something louder and more chaotic with “My Body Knows When to Run”, which builds towards a stellar riff and maybe one of the best final thirty seconds of any indie track in a long while. If not by the energetic DIY sound preceding it, these final few moments of chanting and screaming will hook you from the off. Though the influences of Bowie and Sparks are profoundly felt throughout the record, alongside references aplenty to noughties Indie sounds like The Killers and LCD Soundsystem, never let yourself forget that this opening track feels like a genuinely new and exciting vision perfectly auditioned to all those new listeners and future fans hopping aboard the Walt Disco train.
With the latest single “Lies”, Jocelyn talks about faking it until she breaks it. It has an addictive Indie sound, which, admittedly, is a bit of a vague description because Indie is not a genre. It just means the track wastes no time and is energetic and powerful throughout the entire three minutes that it sticks with you. The vocal layering is powerful, and the songwriting prowess immense, taking the group a further step forward from their already exceptional talent. The next track, “Never New”, which name drops Nicholas Cage, demonstrates the identity crises at the heart of the album with great dexterity, as the vocals drain out into something bleaker and sadder and the instrumentation grows dirtier and harsher, but all for art’s sake. Never New sounds like if The Arctic Monkeys’ The Car was as good as it sounded in Alex Turner’s head.
Amidst constant reinvention and subverting expectations, “Warmface” dislocates us in sounds of supermarket check-outs, gossiping whispers and sterling guitars. The track feels more like a step aside from the main narrative, a love song driven by the question: “Who needs them anyway?” After all, the album is largely about feeling at home in yourself, but how that state of mind can exist in conflict with the version of you everyone else expects you to be. “Don’t do this alone” is central to Walt Disco’s present flux of self-determination as its members get to grips with who they are as individuals in a complicated society, but equally managing who they are as band members in an equally complicated music industry.
It seems counterproductive, when Walt Disco’s lyrics are so raw and just shy of ambiguous, to boil any one song down to a single idea, but “New Friends” may just be about new versions of yourself and what you leave behind through reinvention, masked behind a codependency – “Cold sweats when I hear your name” – the tortured transformation that lingers post break-up. On “Total Surprise Machine,” themes of identity peak in what sounds like the darkest a song by The Darkness could ever stretch. The lyrics ‘I was made just for you baby’ are chilling, as the narrator compares themselves to something mechanical and automated, with messy, penetrating guitars to boot.
If you spent the album up until this point multi-tasking, scrolling, whatever, then “Look Out for Me” deserves your full attention. Few indie artists would ever dare open up and be so vulnerable at such an early stage of their career, especially one you might originally have underestimated for the clever but nudgingly gimmicky Walt Disney pun of their band name. This ethereal, dreamy, yearning single puts the instrumentation and vocals at conflicting signatures to create a totally unpredictable sound, as Jocelyn battles HRT and a challenging healthcare system. To name just a few blistering lyrics on the subject: “Going on the waiting list, it’s scary, I could lose myself in there,” and, most impactfully: “Now put me in someone else’s hands”. Powerful, vital songwriting carries over to the comparatively upbeat “My Body’s Still Mine”, the track with the greatest Bowie lineage both sonically and lyrically, nevertheless covering earth-shattering themes of prejudice and self-acceptance.
Walt Disco’s album, well, Walt Disco, concludes with “Wonderland”, focusing on adjusting to a new reality and how that sometimes seems indistinguishable from a fantasy. Joceyln sings: “Here comes the start of our lives,” which sounds celebratory, but the tone of voice is suitably reserved, like the dawning of a sunset at the end of a movie. We are about to walk towards it, into our happy ever after, but first, give us some time to breathe.
