Two years ago, Chromatics promised to release new album Dear Tommy by Valentine’s Day of 2015. That never happened, and to date the album still hasn’t surface. And now it appears there’s a pretty good reason for that: It’s been deleted. Alexis Rivera, Chromatics’ publicist, delivered a long Twitter explanation behind Dear Tommy never being released. In the thread, Rivera says that the band’s producer and songwriter Johnny Jewel almost died in Hawaii in 2015, and after he came back, he destroyed all of the CD and vinyl copies of the album, and that he deleted the album from his hard drive.
Rivera says that Jewel since started working on it again, and that it “has the same titles, same lyrics, same track order, as when it was announced Dec of 2014. Nothing’s changed except it’s better”
Some investigation into the band’s streaming pages reveals that those songs have indeed disappeared for the time being. The band’s Soundcloud no longer features any Dear Tommy tracks, such as the title track or “I Can Never Be Myself When You’re Around.” Rivera also notes that the new album is, indeed, coming.
Read her full Twitter thread below.
Christmas day 2015 Johnny almost died in Hawaii. I don't want to go into details, but I'm sure he'll discuss it in interviews at some point.
— Alexis Rivera (@echoparkrecords) May 3, 2017
When we announced "Twin Peaks" in March, you can see some of those broken Tommy records https://t.co/Ink9W8hI24
— Alexis Rivera (@echoparkrecords) May 3, 2017
March of 2011: Glass Candy was playing in Guadalajara & Johnny gave me a box of Kill For Love CDs. He wanted the album out later that month.
— Alexis Rivera (@echoparkrecords) May 3, 2017
Johnny destroyed the CDs & vinyl of that version of Kill For Love in April 2011. Publicly no one knew. But it kickstarted a creative streak
— Alexis Rivera (@echoparkrecords) May 3, 2017
He even referenced the other version of Kill For Love (and multiple changes) in an interview with @pitchfork in 2012 https://t.co/PZTySumQOU pic.twitter.com/8c7XBsS14l
— Alexis Rivera (@echoparkrecords) May 3, 2017
.@pitchfork "Dear Tommy" has the same titles, same lyrics, same track order, as when it was announced Dec of 2014. Nothing's changed except it's better
— Alexis Rivera (@echoparkrecords) May 3, 2017
Here’s the tracklist for the album, since it apparently isn’t changing:
1 Fresh Blood
2 In Films
3 Time Rider
4 I Can Never Be Myself When You’re Around
5 Cherry
6 She Says
7 Just Like You
8 4 A.M.
9 Teacher
10 Camera
11 Dear Tommy
12 Touch Blue
13 After Hours
14 Shadows
15 In Silence
16 Colorblind
17 Endless Sleep
Chromatics’ 2012 album Kill for Love is on our list of the Top 100 Albums of the Decade So Far.
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