Hailing from Glasgow, Walt Disco are your new favourite queer post-punk band. After undergoing a line-up change, the band have re-centred, refocused and now return with their first full length album, the opus that is Unlearning. The album is a masterpiece in maximalism, with elaborate production which takes you to the dark side but always with the Walt Disco sense of humour and joy.
This new era sees the band in an even more playful mood, bringing even more looks to the stage and with frontperson James Potter currently the face of Charles Jeffrey’s latest campaign. We speak with James about the Unlearning era and LGBT life in Glasgow.
This era feels like a totally different band, serving us colour and life! What’s changed for you all this time around?
With our lineup change adding Jack and Charlie at the end of 2019, and the pandemic giving us time to really think about who we are, the band has had a bit of a metamorphosis in the past couple years. We’ve spent the last couple years really thinking about what we want to sound like and how we want to present ourselves to the world. I think we have all come out of the other side of this tough couple of years with a new sense of self and we can’t wait to show it to the world.
Unlearning sounds like it will be the most grandiose, theatrical event – it even has an Interval. Is this finally the Walt Disco rock opera we have been promised for so long?
It is indeed! We feel we’ve really created an emotional arc on this album, and are so happy to finally have a larger fleshed out body of work under our belts. Our interval track ‘The Costume Change’ was a great chance to experiment with our first ever instrumental track. It evolved through a few forms before it arrived at its final state. Starting as a contemplative piano piece then eventually becoming more industrial as we were getting more immersed in sharp and cutting saw synths and sampling real world sounds. Although it’s an instrumental track, we still see it as very melodic.
You are big Rocky Horror fans. Have you reached out to Tim Curry or Richard O’Brien for a vocal?
Not yet, we’re more bashful than we look! Maybe in this next year we’ll grow enough of a profile that they’d respond, we’d really love to pick Tim Curry’s brain on his performance style and Richard O’Brien on his timeless and iconic songwriting. Rocky Horror was very formative for many of us, and is still one of our fave films to chuck on together.
Your last EP was named after an old porn publication, right? Where does the title Unlearning come from?
It sure was! Our manager found it in a weird and wonderful museum of curiosities and he just had to relay it onto us. ‘Unlearning’ came from a line in the final poem of the album closer ‘If I Had a Perfect Life’. And we thought it summed up the message of the album perfectly, unlearning things the world has taught us for years about how we should present ourselves to the world and act. It questions whether a traditionally ‘perfect’ life is something that should truly be strived for, and suggests that life’s imperfections bring their own beauty and rewards.
This album covers romances, flings and affairs. Dating kind of stopped for me in lockdown and then I just got out of the habit. Which song from Unlearning do I need in my life and why?
‘Be An Actor’! It’ll put you in the mood for some sweet romance, might even have you flying to Paris to find it too. We think everyone occasionally views their own life as a movie, and often romance has you feeling emotions in an almost cinematic way. This track explores ideas of dreaming and writing your own ‘plot’ as it were!
My friend is a professor in Punk and loves telling me pop stars were more fluid in the 80s than they are now because there were no real labels for people like Boy George or Marilyn – they just were. How do you feel things in the 80s compare with what’s happening in music and the queer community now?
I imagine things are a lot better now considering that was 40 years ago. Artists like Boy George couldn’t really just simply be to a full extent. You could say it’s better now, but there’s still a long way to go. There’s certainly a lot less reggae-influenced queer pop nowadays.
We are big Drag Race fans and I wondered how much you felt Drag Race had shifted things for LGBT artists too? When will you be a judge on UK?!
We have a soft spot for Ginny Lemon and it’s great that people like them now have a mainstream platform. We hope this can open the doors to even more mainstream queer entertainment and media. We’d gladly judge if they’d have us, we certainly wouldn’t let ’em off easy!
Walt Disco are from Glasgow. What does the world need to know about Glasgow’s LGBT scene and its history?
There’s a lot of amazing people and talented queer artists in Glasgow. We’ve worked with and are close friends with artists that we’ve no doubt will become renowned queer royalty (they already are to us). Namely TAAHLIAH, BOBBIE and the wonderful Lizzie Reid. We’d also like to shout-out Bonjour, a profit-sharing workers coop and queer bar that we frequent!
Finally we are named after the biggest selling single in 2001 so we always ask what is your favourite Mariah Carey song?
Definitely ‘Emotions’! It’s soulful, sexy and housy! It also features the highest note in recorded history (the best executed one for sure). Absolutely insane !!
Unlearning is out this Friday. Pre-order it here.
