Unlearning

Album review

After the self-released EP Young Hard and Handsome in September 2020, which included the brilliant 'Hey Boy (You're One of Us)', Walt Disco signed to Lucky Number for their first full-length. The Glasgow six piece, who all met at a party in 2016, wasted no time. Collectively inspired by love, androgyny and the present-day, the young Scots take inspiration from artists such as Scott Walker, David Bowie, fellow countrymen Orange Juice and Associates as well as SOPHIE and Arca, wrapping their prose in an eloquent mix of 80's post-punk, glam rock and futuristic pop. The look, as well as the music, does not dive into the past, quite the opposite. The former Glasgow University students simply draw inspiration from the past in order to tell the story of a youth that feels constricted and cramped in a narrow-minded era. “Our music has got theatre and glamour to it; it’s never really understated. The best review we ever got was someone saying: Walt Disco should rewrite The Rocky Horror Picture Show”, says singer James Potter.

Unlearning, which should have been called Unlearning The Perfect Life, is about deconstruction and freedom. “You say we're stupid, I say you're old/Since when did you grow so stupidly cold?/Stuck in the past, you lost yourself there/And let us be young/Young, hard, and handsome, darling”, sings James over the prominent bass line of 'Cut Your Hair'. These twelve short sketches, which border on rock opera and for which the electronic experiments of 'The Costume Change' serve as a kind of interlude, are given their dramatic quality by James Potter’s voice - who learned to sing from a Freddie Mercury-loving opera singer. His voice naturally lends itself to the tragicomic choruses ('How Cool Are You?'). However, the album also moves through a kind of dystopian universe, where the pathos of darkwave ('Weightless') meets the joyful turbulence of Dead Or Alive-style dance pop ('Selfish Lover') with the help of drum machines and synthesizers, mixed with angsty hyperpop ('If I Had a Perfect Life, Macilent') sculpted in the vortex of software. Here’s the renaissance 2.0 of the New Romantics wave we've been waiting for - an obvious Qobuzissime! © Charlotte Saintoin/Qobuz