Walt Disco

For a band tempted to start over entirely, walt disco’s new music doesn’t erase the past: it turns it into art worth living. Rather than a rebirth, the band’s next era is something harder won: a continuation, sharpened by doubt, grounded in their evolving personal identities, and driven by the belief that they can still become exactly what they were chasing all along - a generation-defining band who dared to do something unique.

It made no sense for a group so enviably young to be worrying about longevity – but that was the situation walt disco found themselves in. Their debut album, Unlearning, was released in 2022, scoring enormous buzz and award nominations (including Best Independent Album at the AIM Awards). Touring took them from the likes of Glastonbury and SXSW to support slots in arenas around the world, alongside cultural co-signs from Charles Jeffrey and Louboutin. Yet looking back on 2024’s second album, The Warping - which still earned a second nomination for Scottish Album of the Year - walt disco felt as if they’d lost momentum, and were at a crossroads in their lives and careers.

Separately and collectively, uncertainty surrounded walt disco to the extent that they even considered changing their name altogether. The impulse for a clean slate was particularly understandable for Jocelyn, who started HRT at the start of the year and wanted to begin again. “We were all convinced by the idea of that fresh start,” offers drummer Jack Martin. Ultimately, though, they decided to keep walt disco. “It was particularly hard for me I think,” adds Jocelyn, “because that thought had helped me come out to my mum as a jumping off point. You know, ‘a few things in my life are changing…’.” The irony of ending up with a self-titled album, using a name they almost walked away from, is not lost on any of them.

The walt disco of 2026 is a thrillingly rejuvenated prospect. The quality and ingenuity of their new material initially caught the attention of Leeds-based label, EMI North; the UK’s first ever major label regional outpost, and long-time fans of the group. Today, the band’s management and visual collaborators all consciously fall under a Glasgow postcode, with walt disco turning a creative corner at a memorable Paper Dress Vintage show in front of superfans and industry people. “That gig showed that instead we could just be the best we’d ever been as Walt Disco,” says bassist Charlie Lock. As they threw themselves into another record, walt disco emerged with songs that felt enriched by experience, turning years’ worth of graft to their advantage and ultimately ending up somewhere, unquestionably, new.

Set for release later this year, walt disco is a fearlessly ambitious alt-rock album that could also come from no other band. It grapples with the strange, disorienting feeling of growing up - amid body dysmorphia, and changing relationships - and gives voice to the quiet terror of your twenties. “A lot of the songs are about these feelings of starting to feel like old news and struggling with being nearly there in the music industry but not quite there,” explains Jocelyn. The album is searingly honest about life as a creative, where momentum is the artist’s responsibility and luck plays an outsized role. Yet it’s also deeply representational of a generation who “were only 24 and 25, when we were feeling chopped – it’s fucked up,” laughs Jack darkly.

Recorded over four weeks in Brighton - with an additional week in London - alongside emerging producer Ellie Mason (Stella Donnelly, Liars), walt disco marked a complete change in process too. Mason wasn’t just chosen for her technical ability, but for her cultural alignment with the band – a collaborator who could push their increasingly intricate vocal harmonies and shared vision. For the first time, walt disco recorded live as a full unit. “We asked ourselves what would happen if we just wrote more to our core tastes, leaned in to what made us love music at our formative ages,” says Jocelyn. The results are diverse but lend themselves to a cohesive inspirational palette: echoes of Smashing Pumpkins, Cocteau Twins, Placebo, MGMT or The Sundays, wrought into a shape unmistakably walt disco’s.

Their rules were simple: heavy guitars, dynamic electronic textures, and emotionally-rich songwriting. In some ways, recapturing just why walt disco formed in the first place. “It’s a certain era and a certain ethos when you first get into music and play guitars loud in your bedroom as though you’ve never heard them before – that’s what we were going for,” says Jack. The album is shaped by such nostalgia, but not trapped in it; employed to support a smart reflection on youth, rather than a blanket recreation for the sake of it. “We’ve stepped back a bit from being ‘we’re the most different band you’ve ever heard’ and now just want to be creative within the confines of what a band is known to be,” adds Jocelyn.

First single ‘Coup de foudre’ captures such newfound clarity perfectly: a raw, immediate rush of 2000s indie dancefloor intensity, which channels the sharp directness of Yeah Yeah Yeahs into today’s concerns. Built around the French phrase for a sudden, electric connection, ‘Coup de foudre’ is a lustful, fast-paced jolt that few walt disco followers - least of all the band themselves - might have seen coming. “It’s fun to have a horny, chaotic song as the first taste,” says Jocelyn. “I knew it would be a hoot.”

What follows is an album that sets out to find comfort - and the occasional bit of gallows humour - amidst the chaos. Opening track ‘My Body Knows When To Run’ observes a situation and a world on fire (“I’ve been busy doing God’s work for him”), its anthemic chorus almost celebratory of uncertainty. Second single ‘Lies’, meanwhile, is more bittersweet, its sparkling guitars masking the unease of a relationship quietly sustained by small deceptions. “Sometimes I’d say ‘I feel fine’ when I didn’t,” Jocelyn admits. “It rarely actually helps.” The song moves non-linearly through doubt, questioning whether our illusion of everyday stability is in fact easier to live with.

On ‘Don’t Do This Alone,’ walt disco shift into cinematic territory. Modular synths and swelling choral arrangements frame a personal confession over obsession, and its day-to-day impacts. The track reflects a period of spiralling – drinking, identity struggles, and the overwhelming process of transition – ultimately landing on a simple but vital message: ask for help.

‘Never New’, meanwhile, followed a surprising wave of existential angst as Jocelyn was asked to be a judge on the Sound of Young Scotland. Blending humour with vulnerability and tackling dysphoria through surreal imagery, “I compare myself to Nicolas Cage and Michael Phelps,” Jocelyn laughs. “They’re like my gender dysphoria demons.” Beneath that, though, lies a deeper fear over the passage of time. “For me, as a trans person, aging means something very specific. The idea of growing into an old man is really distressing.”

The ballad ‘Look Out For Me’ is quieter, but holds the most powerful scene of the record. Written the day Jocelyn sought NHS medical advice about gender dysphoria, it captures – with faint country and post-rock stylings – a moment of unexpected compassion. “You hear so much about how transgender care is at the doctor’s discretion, and that was really scary – especially in a village, because I went to the GP back home,” she remembers. “She was just so nice and helpful and calming about it and did everything in her power to help me. Her kindness was such a big deal – it felt like she was an angel.” After she wrote the song, the miracle bestowed on Jocelyn felt political, which is the exact weight that the song carries for a listener too. It shouldn’t be a miracle but we understand why it is.

Elsewhere, Jack’s nimble songwriting adds further dimension. Reflective post-rock ballad ‘Warmface’ remembers him meeting a former walt disco bandmate who has moved into a stable, conventional life. “I felt like an idiot chasing this possibly delusional dream of music,” he admits. “Like, what am I doing?” The song imagines an alternate reality where he chose differently. The expansive indie rock of ‘New Friends’, too, captures the strange grief of a friendship ending. “You feel the ghost of that person for ages,” Jack says. “It’s different from a romantic breakup, but just as painful.” Meanwhile, ‘Total Surprise Machine’, with its thick, fuzzy distortion and lush saturation, explores feelings of learning how to love again after a more emotionally detached relationship, framing vulnerability as something mechanical, awkward, and relearned.

The album draws to a close with quiet pain at first, and then with an outpouring of grief-soaked gratitude. Standout track ‘My Body’s Still Mine’ is a statement of intent to live as best as possible, to be at peace with the past and yourself. “I want the feeling of having arrived in so many ways,” explains Jocelyn of its emotional weight. “I wanted the band to be where I want it to be, wanted to be transitioning, wanted to be more kind to the people who love me. My conclusion was that even though I don’t love my body, it serves me very well.”

Ending the album is ‘Wonderland’, a cathartic, emo-influenced piece that moves from darkness toward hope. Written during a difficult period living in band member Finlay McCarthy’s cramped flat-turned-studio, it confronts Jocelyn’s body image issues, dysphoria, and intrusive thoughts. “You can’t change the body you’re given, and that’s upsetting,” Jocelyn says. “But even if you could, you still have to fix your head.” The song edges toward something brighter, its closing refrain rejecting escapism and ultimately death: “I don’t need no wonderland.”

Reflecting on walt disco’s journey to this point, Jocelyn recalls the football team in the village she grew up in: perpetually losing, conceding goal after goal, yet always met with one relentlessly upbeat teammate insisting there was still “something to play for.” It’s a memory that feels almost absurd in hindsight, but underpins the final moments of the record: self-aware, slightly ridiculous, but completely sincere. It’s probably how you have to be to survive a music career, and life more broadly.

Ultimately, walt disco as an album has become something for the band to play for, the sound of that voice on the pitch. But they’re no longer gesturing at optimism, having created something that truly feels like them. Or as Jocelyn sings on the rousing ‘My Body’s Still Mine’: “so fae the start boys / although we’re 8 down / the cold is pinching / but I’m back in town.”