Headphones (20th Anniversary Reissue)

SONGS
1. Gas and Matches
2. Shit Talker
3. Hot Girls
4. I Never Wanted You
5. Major Cities
6. Natural Disaster
7. Hello Operator
8. Pink and Brown
9. Wise Blood
10. Slow Car Crash

BONUS SONGS
The Five Chord
Gas and Matches (acoustic)
* Included on a separate 7" record that comes with the LP
* Included on the CD as bonus tracks. 

RELEASE DETAILS
+ All orders get full album + bonus tracks download (MP3 + WAV)
+ Deluxe 20th-anniversary remastered reissue  
+ Remastered by Christopher Colbert (The Walkmen, Richard Swift, Pedro the Lion)  
+ Expanded gatefold artwork by Grammy-nominated artist Jesse Ledoux  
+ New liner notes by David Dark
+ Exclusive limited edition LP on Transparent + Black Splatter vinyl (500 copies)
+ LP includes a 7” on black vinyl with two bonus tracks
+ CD limited edition hand-numbered copies (500 copies)
+ CD includes two bonus tracks 
+ CD comes in a cardboard wallet + 12-page booklet

In 2005, Headphones arrived as a seismic shift in David Bazan’s already formidable canon—a collection of synth-driven confessions that push the boundaries of narrative songwriting. Stripped down to its barest essentials, the album finds Bazan and collaborators Tim Walsh and Frank Lenz constructing an audaciously raw soundscape: no guitars, just synthesizers, live drums, and Bazan’s unmistakable vocals. Twenty years later, it remains a masterwork of emotional excavation and geopolitical reckoning, as relevant today as the day it was released. 

This 20th Anniversary edition, remastered by Christopher Colbert at National Freedom (The Walkmen, Richard Swift, Pedro the Lion), is housed in a gatefold jacket with expanded artwork by Grammy-nominated designer Jesse LeDoux, plus liner notes by writer and Belmont University Associate Professor David Dark. The self-titled album threads a delicate needle, simultaneously personal and prophetic. Songs like “Major Cities” tackle the macrocosm of American imperialism with clarity and anger, while tracks like “I Never Wanted You” unearth the raw wounds of interpersonal defeat. These are stories of inner and outer collapse, of bullies (both personal and political) wreaking havoc, yet rendered with humanity. Even in its darkest moments, though, Headphones pulses with the hope that honesty might light a way forward—if only we’ll bear witness to the truth.

On its twentieth anniversary, Headphones feels more vital than ever. For those who’ve lived with it since 2005, this reissue is a chance to revisit an old wound, to press on it and see what’s healed and what still aches. For new listeners, it’s a chance to sit with something audacious and true—an album that invites us to reckon with the ways we fail each other—and the ways we might still be good. Twenty years on, Headphones remains a rare album that doesn’t just speak to you, but asks you to listen harder.