
Details about a new box-set edition of the Replacements' 1989 album "Don't Tell a Soul" ironically could not be kept a secret.
After information on the Minneapolis rock legends' reissue leaked Thursday via Amazon U.K. — and music blogs subsequently geeked out over it — Rhino Records pushed the official announcement up to Friday morning.
The reveal had been planned for next Tuesday, a day to which the band's social media accounts have cryptically teased in recent days. And yes, the mere fact that the Replacements have social media accounts was news in and of itself to a lot of people.
So here's the pre-scooped scoop: The expanded version of the band's most slickly produced and commercially touted record for Reprise/Warner Bros. is titled "Dead Man's Pop" and will be released Sept. 27. List price: $79.98.
It will feature a newly mixed version of the original album (on both vinyl and CD), a CD of alternate studio versions from earlier, shelved sessions in Bearsville, N.Y., and two more discs featuring a concert recording from the "Don't Tell a Soul" tour stop at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee on June 2, 1989.
"Don't Tell a Soul," which featured the single "I'll Be You," was released with a "radio-ready" sound mix that frontman Paul Westerberg reportedly disdained. The new version was crafted by the album's producer, Matt Wallace, in the spirit of the original mix he made at Paisley Park in 1988.
"The true spirit of the Replacements was always there on the recordings we did back in 1988, and now you can hear and feel it clearly," Wallace said in a release from Rhino. "This was the project of a lifetime for me when we recorded it 30-plus years ago, and it's even truer today as we've finally fulfilled our original vision."

But probably the biggest attention-getter will be the six tracks made in the Bearsville studio with kindred spirit Tom Waits, only one of which ("Date to Church") has seen daylight before. Foremost among those is a Waits-spiked version of "If Only You Were Lonely," a twangy drinking song that frontman Paul Westerberg recorded as the acoustic B-side to the band's rip-roaring debut single for Twin/Tone Records, 1981's "I'm in Trouble."