WARPED REALITY

With 2022's spine-tingling debut Unlearning, Glasgow glam-pop collective Walt Disco marked themselves out as one of the most intriguing outfits on the UK's alternative scene. On brilliant follow-up The Warping, however, they're shapeshifting boldly into the band they were always meant to be...

- SAM LAW

THERE IS NO such thing as standing still. Not really. Walt Disco understand this better than most. Breaking out on the eve of COVID, the Glaswegian collective could have been caught in the suffocating stasis of lockdown. Instead, they plotted a way forward, pouring empty, uncertain months into striking debut LP Unlearning.

Rather than building conservatively close to home as life opened up again, they harnessed that record's momentum to get out and see the world. And as technical difficulties threaten to derail their homecoming at McChuills Bar when we meet on a balmy Wednesday at the tail end of Scottish summer, they just sit back and smile, quietly assured that it'll take more than dodgy speakers to stop tonight's sweaty soft launch for superb second album The Warping.

"It's a record about change," smiles 'matriarch' and vocalist Jocelyn Si, surrounded by bandmates Finlay McCarthy (synths), Lewis Carmichael (guitar), Charlie Lock (bass) and Jack Martin (drums) in the calm before the storm. "It's about reacting to change, being afraid of change, wanting things to change. Unlearning could be seen as an album about unlearning habits and how we think about things in our lives. The Warping is about changing how we deal with those things moving forward."