New releases: ‘Scared to Get Happy,’ Lloyd Cole, Poltergeist, Jane’s Addiction, Midge Ure

Record Rack: A round-up of the week’s new albums, expanded reissues and/or box sets, appearing each Monday on Slicing Up Eyeballs.

Various Artists

RELEASE: Scared To Get Happy: A Story of Indie-Pop 1980-1989
BACKSTORY: Cherry Red Records this week releases, in the U.K., a monster 5-disc, 134-track, Nuggets-inspired box set that the British record label says is “devoted to the 1980s indie guitar-pop revolution which swept across the British Isles.” (See full tracklist)
BUY: Amazon.co.uk (5CD box set)

Lloyd Cole

RELEASE: Standards
BACKSTORY: The former Commotions leader returns this week, in the U.K., with a new 11-track album that finds the singer-songwriter reuniting with part of the team — Matthew Sweet on bass and co-producer/drummer Fred Maher — behind Cole’s 1990 self-titled solo debut, the so-called “X” album.
BUY: Amazon.co.uk (CD, digital, vinyl)

Poltergeist

RELEASE: Your Mind is a Box (Let Us Fill it With Wonder)
BACKSTORY: Echo & The Bunnymen guitarist Will Sergeant reunites with the band’s original bassist, Les Pattinson for an instrumental album that’s being pitched as a cross between prog rock and krautrock. The album is out digitally in the U.S., and arrives on CD this week in the U.K.
BUY: Amazon.com (Digital), Amazon.co.uk (CD, digital)

Jane’s Addiction

RELEASE: Live in NYC
BACKSTORY: The alt-rock legends this week release a multi-format audio and visual document — CD, MP3, vinyl, DVD, Blu-ray — of their July 25, 2011, concert at New York City’s Terminal 5, featuring live versions of such tracks as “Ain’t No Right,” “Ted, Just Admit It…,” “Three Days” and more.
BUY: Amazon.com (CD, digital, vinyl, DVD, Blu-ray)

Midge Ure

RELEASE: Live in Chicago
BACKSTORY: The once and current Ultravox frontman has released a live album recorded this past January during his rare U.S. solo tour, a disc that features performances of “Dear God,” “Answers to Nothing,” “Dancing with Tears in My Eyes,” “Love’s Great Adventure” and Visage’s “Fade to Grey.”
BUY: MidgeUre.com (CD)

The Three O’Clock

RELEASE: The Hidden World Revealed
BACKSTORY: The newly reunited Paisley Underground favorites this week release a new 20-track best-of that spans the years 1981 to 1986, featuring better-known songs such as “Jet Fighter” and “With a Cantaloupe Girlfriend” as well as previously unreleased demos and alternate takes.
BUY: Amazon.com (CD, digital)

The Primitives

RELEASE: Lovely: 25th Anniversary Edition
BACKSTORY: The reunited indie-pop outfit this week releases, in the U.K., a 25th-anniversary reissue of their debut album, with a second disc featuring 11 bonus tracks, including the single “Way Behind Me” that was later shoehorned onto Lovely, plus single mixes, alternate takes and live cuts.
BUY: Amazon.co.uk (CD, digital)

The Teardrop Explodes

RELEASE: Wilder: Deluxe Edition
BACKSTORY: The second album from Julian Cope and Co. is reissued this week in the U.K. in an expanded 2CD set, with the original 11-track album supplemented with 18 bonus tracks, including B-sides, alternate versions and BBC sessions recorded for John Peel and Richard Skinner.
BUY: Amazon.co.uk (CD, digital)

Devo

RELEASE: Hardcore 1, Hardcore 2
BACKSTORY: A pair of long-out-of-print collections of early Devo demos are reissued this week on vinyl and digital formats, with the two sets due to be combined in a single 2CD set, with a handful of previously unreleased tracks, on July 9. The sets document “the group’s beginning as pre-punk outcasts.”
BUY: Amazon.com (Hardcore 1, Hardcore 2)

The Swimming Pool Q’s

RELEASE: 1984-1986: The A&M Years
BACKSTORY: The Southern jangle-pop outfit this week reissues its mid-’80s albums — 1984’s The Swimming Pool Q’s and 1986’s Blue Tomorrow — on CD for the first time ever, in a 2CD set and a 3CD/1DVD box set that includes a disc with 17 bonus tracks and a DVD of rare footage.
BUY: Amazon.com (2CD and box set)