walt disco’s Self-Titled Third Album Is a Clean-Slate Statement

walt disco’s third album is self-titled because the band needed to hear itself clearly. The Scottish five-piece had considered dropping the name after their previous record, and by their account the old material no longer matched the music they wanted to make. Rather than present a rebrand, the new album sets out a simple premise: write honestly, in line with the tastes that made them musicians.

The group’s current lineup, Jocelyn Si, Jack Martin, Lewis Carmichael, Charlie Lock and Finlay McCarthy, came to the record after years of personal and sonic change. Si describes earlier work as technically ambitious but disconnected from the genres they were being sorted into. Live, they have stopped playing old songs. Martin says the album carries the voice of the whole band, which is less a slogan than a practical shift. The writing and recording process was more fluid, and the result is meant to sound like five people working from the same centre.

That centre includes lived experience. Si has said the record required maturity, including navigating queerness and gender dysphoria, and that an earlier version of the band could not have written it. Nearly a decade after forming, walt disco are not chasing novelty. They are making a case for the name by giving it a sound that finally belongs to everyone in the room.