Glasgow outfit Walt Disco favor a brash version of New Wave. Recalling the best moments of bands as disparate as The Assocites and Virgin Prunes, the band's music blends emotional insights with the sleek surfaces of synth-pop. The Warping, their second album, drops this week.
"Come Undone", the lead single, combines Billy Mackenzie-style vocals with a sweeping bit of pop confection. It's a smart, heart-on-the-sleeve-sort of music. "The Warping" is all "China Girl"-era Bowie, while "You Make Me Feel So Dumb", a highlight here, is a looser groove-worker. There's a supple dance-hook here, and a relaxed approximation of past forms with the whole presentation being one of the better samplings of the Walt Disco power.
In interviews, Walt Disco have called themselves "outcasts", and not just in a sense that they id as a queer band. What makes them wonderful outcasts is that there's a bold theatricality here that imbues all of The Warping with a rich musicality that is striking. This is big music, music that swings for the fences, with emotional sweep and cleverness. And while Tilda Swinton has gone on record as saying that Walt Disco is her favorite band, I don't think it's a stretch to imagine Bowie championing this lot too. So much of what informed the New Wave I grew up on as a teen can be heard inspiring the sounds here. Walt Disco add to that legacy their own wit and heart. That makes The Warping both an interesting album, but also an affecting one.
[Photo: Izzy Leach]