Bleachers have announced details of a “reimagined” version of their debut album ‘Strange Desire’ – created to celebrate 10 years since the original’s release.
The original record came out on July 11, 2014 via RCA, and marked the first full-length album from the American indie pop band.
It contained singles including ‘I Wanna Get Better’, ‘Rollercoaster’ and ‘Shadow’, and received a generally positive response from fans and critics alike upon its release. It also debuted at Number 11 on the Billboard 200 chart and sold over 21,000 copies in its first week.
Now, a decade on, Jack Antonoff has revealed details of a 10th-anniversary edition, which will see the band present the tracklist in a reimagined way and with the new title: ‘A Stranger Desired’. Pre-order it here.
“I didn’t sleep or call home enough. The hotel at night had me restless. I wrote from there. A burning I felt was set to take me down if I didn’t name it and know it,” the frontman wrote on Instagram, recalling his time working on the initial release.
“‘Strange Desire’ was born in this rough time with the full armour of sonic chaos. Voices fluttering around me, hotel room walls echoing in the vocal takes, layers on layers and the low end of that Juno gluing the kitchen sink together as it still does for my band.
“It was the sound that I called Bleachers. that feeling of being there but in no way at the centre. Watching and dreaming. Shouting from a corner. In the shadow. I wrote from that misunderstood place and I still do.”
He also went on to explain how looking back at the album 10 years on made him realise he now has a different outlook on his music, and he was writing the project in the hopes of finding his audience.
“On this anniversary that feels so sacred I have realised something: it wasn’t only a strange desire to write these songs, there was something unknown to me happening. I was looking for you: my people. I hadn’t been honest enough in my life and as result I let the wrong ones in,” he explained.
“So here it is. The first Bleachers album with me and the band knowing what we know now. All eleven tracks reimagined without the armour I needed at the time, a different kind now. Reimagined after that stranger has become the great rock of my life and the band’s.
“Knowing how that chapter ends, feeling so sorry for myself then, as well as inspired by that person who laid it all down for something better. I’d do it again.”
The first song from the 10th-anniversary edition is set to arrive on August 2, although it hasn’t been confirmed which track it’ll be yet. The full album will be released on September 6.
The debut album was followed by 2017’s ‘Gone Now’, and the band released their self-titled fourth album in March via Dirty Hit and Shadow Of The City. It earned a glowing four-star review by NME’s Rhian Daly, who described it as containing “some of their best material yet”.
Antonoff also spoke to NME the following month, and recalled how he had found a new version of self-respect throughout his time in the industry.
He said: “[It’s] to do what I love. You know, I live my life in the studio and on tour – that’s how I communicate and feel myself. [But] everyone has a different version of it. I think maintaining it as you define it – and not as it’s defined in a moment and culture – is pretty vital to maintain dignity and our own human experience. Especially as more and more of our lives become like other people’s reflections.
“It’s really important to reject that, especially as an artist or someone in the public eye [where] there’s so much pressure to toe any kind of party line thinking. And the truth is, I have thoughts that aren’t really quantified by any person or community; they’re just my own. And so I don’t want to be, I guess, as readable or predictable as I’d be celebrated [for] if I were to be.”
Next month, Bleachers will play at the O2 Academy Brixton in London and make appearances at Reading & Leeds 2024. You can find any remaining tickets here.