Art-pop stars Walt Disco: ‘0.1 per cent of the population are trans – why is it so divisive?’

Walt Disco aren’t inclined to play it safe. When the glam-pop collective set out to write a song that touched on familiar millennial obsessions – global warming, toxic masculinity – they eschewed the lachrymose lamenting of their peers in favour of a Celtic-style sea shanty called The Captain, which further had the temerity to rhyme “cantankerous” with “can’t anchor us.”

That puckish spirit is very much in evidence on a decidedly grey late-spring day in Glasgow, where, in a windowless basement to the east of the city centre, Walt Disco are bringing all the chromatic verve found wanting in the rain-slicked streets. Bassist Charlie Lock is sporting a pair of pre-loved angel wings, singer Jocelyn Si is catching the light with their dangling silver earrings, and keyboardist/guitarist Finlay McCarthy is going full dandy in a shirt emblazoned with rainbow-hued discs, paired with a pair of culottes.

“And we’ve actually dressed down for the occasion,” laughs drummer Jack Martin.

“Yeah, this is kind of office wear for us,” agrees guitarist Lewis Carmichael, indicating his spear-collar shirt, skinny tie, and – quelle horreur – sensible shoes.

Those who’ve caught Walt Disco live – they supported OMD on tour earlier this year, and are embarking on the festival circuit this summer – or seen any of their never-knowingly-understated videos will know the truth of this. Take the clip for their recent single, You Make Me Feel So Dumb, in which they are parachuted, extraterrestrial-style, into a corporate mixer event, the executive mufti of actual office wear contrasted vividly with the band’s extravagant guyliner, updos, and bondage knickerbockers. 

And then take the music itself, which on the band’s new album The Warping whips up an exotic stew – a roving stovies, if you will – of influences, from Young Americans-era Bowie to the 70s art-pop staccato of Sparks via the wilful experimentation of Dundee post-punks The Associates and the dramarama of early Roxy Music. They’re on more than nodding terms with the outré, sampling air raid sirens and car crashes rather than old soul classics, and responding to what Si calls “a dry time for everyone” with a song called I Guess I’ll Have to F–k the Postman (sadly as yet unreleased), featuring a snapping letterbox as a snare. That Walt Disco put their own stamp on this combustible mix is due in no small part to Si’s extraordinary voice, a plumptious baritone that recalls both Scott Walker and The Blue Nile’s Paul Buchanan (WD are big fans of both), and which lends every song – even the less skittish ones – an inherent drama.

“Everyone says it’s stylised,” says Si of their formidable instrument, as the band assemble themselves, in various states of horizontality, on an L-shaped leatherette sofa. “But that makes it sound as if it’s really studied, and I’m not putting it on at all. It’s just what comes out.” Si considers for a moment. “Like a bellowing vampire.”

Lock guffaws. “We should change our name to The Bellowing Vampires.”

For now, however, Walt Disco will do quite nicely, thank you, for a band that revel in their cartoon glam aesthetic while, like the titular musical genre, taking pleasure seriously as well as giving unruly emotions a plaintive, if not banging, setting. They’re set to queer up the pop space with their pan-sticked presence – Tilda Swinton, fellow Scot and no slouch in the androgyne stakes herself, is apparently a big fan – even if, as Si is at pains to point out, they represent many calling points along the sexual spectrum: “Not all of us are queer. But those of us who are feel like we can be absolutely honest, while those that aren’t are happy to provide a platform and a space in which that can happen.”

As the band once wrote in a mission statement-cum-manifesto, “We all needed a band like Walt Disco at some point in our lives,” so much so that original WD superfans Martin and Lock left their own bands to join them. “A lot of groups right now play it safe,” says Si. “Only a handful of bands at any one time capture your imagination.”

While their debut album, 2022’s Unlearning, found their outsider-pop blueprint necessarily constrained by the pandemic, The Warping is expansive, both in terms of its sound, with woodwind, brass and strings adding baroque flourishes to the arrangements, and the lyrics. The snappy funk of the title track frames a candid exploration of gender dysphoria and body-shame; Come Undone explores feelings of alone-in-the-crowd alienation beneath a blue-eyed-soul sheen; Weeping Willow, inspired by the amicable departure of founding member David Morgan, is a rattling meditation on endings both temporal and ultimate; and the album’s crescendo, the pulsing, propulsive Before the Walls, addresses fears of time running out and things left unsaid.

Si, Walt Disco’s principal songwriter, alongside Martin, describes many of the songs on The Warping as autobiographical. “Addressing what being away from home does to you and how things move on while you’re gone. And also this idea of re-emergence from a period when we were all forced indoors, and how people might perceive you now.”

For Si, the question of perception goes beyond the academic. At the time of Unlearning, they were identifying as James Potter. Their coming out as trans is addressed on The Warping’s tender, country-tinged track Jocelyn.

“When I started realising I was trans, a few years ago, I knew loads of other people going through the same thing, and I was, like, surely everyone will be just fine with it?” says Si. “Then it became this huge hot-button issue for people and things hit rock bottom. I don’t know why it’s so divisive when 0.1 per cent of the population are trans and it doesn’t make a difference to anyone’s life.”

Maybe because it acts as a lightning rod for all manner of other societal issues? “Yeah, everyone’s weighing in,” Si continues. “But I didn’t want to hide or shy away. I want to play to big crowds and be on telly and in the papers, even, or especially, in those I disagree with. I’m like, f—k it, I’ll take any heat that comes, I’m big enough. I want to speak directly to people who would see me as some kind of threat, because the more personal experience you have of something, the harder it is to think in terms of generalities or absolutes, and there’s at least the possibility of empathy.”

Lock: “A lot of the stuff directed at trans people is manufactured hate, clickbait.”

McCarthy: “It’s like people feeling their freedom of speech or action is somehow being undermined. Well then, try having your right to exist denied or at least called into question. This is why the arts are so important – they open people up and expose them to new perspectives. Artists are often at the forefront of wanting to change things.”

If Walt Disco are at the barricades, it’s in a spirit of soft power rather than militancy. They’ll provide a shoulder to cry on before administering a good goosing (consensual, of course), and sending you back out into the fray, buoyed up and perhaps a little less beleaguered than before. As we exit the studio into the late afternoon, and the band scatter – some to dinner, some to dates – the sun is streaming through a gap in the clouds. “Look at that,” intones Si, “a personal benediction from above.” It’s a very Walt Disco kind of comment – just this side of OTT, flirting with the absurd. But you can’t help but think that, in the end, they’re on the side of the angels.

Walt Disco’s latest album The Warping is out now