Tonight’s Slicing Up Eyeballs Music Hour featured new music from the Pet Shop Boys, plus old favorites by Marc Almond, The Call, King Missile, Squeeze, Microdisney, Adam and the Ants, New Order, Lords of the New Church, Husker Du and more. Replay at 2 p.m. EDT Friday on Strangeways Radio.

The second round of 5 Albums box sets from Beggars Archive — promoted as “the last chance to present (these) albums as physical releases in the foreseeable future” — will collect full albums, live recordings and assorted bonus tracks from The Fall, The Icicle Works and Buffalo Tom, and should be out by July.

Killing Joke is due to start a tour of Australia and New Zealand this week, but will be down a man: Drummer Paul Ferguson today announced he’s sitting out the six-date trek due to acute tendonitis, not from drumming, but, rather, from hours of “concentrated scalpel use whilst restoring ancient sculptures.”

Since reuniting last year, The Stone Roses have been somewhat consistent in their setlists, sticking to a core group of songs based, not surprisingly, around their classic 1989 debut. But in Paris last night, the band played 1988’s “Elephant Stone” and “Made of Stone” B-side “Going Down” for the first time since 1990.

It’s the first Monday of the month, which means it’s time to unveil the results of Part 4 of our year-long Best of the ’80s feature, a year-by-year poll to determine the best albums of each year of the 1980s — and then, when that’s wrapped, we’ll run a monster best-of-the-decade poll to crown the overall champs.

Introducing Joy Division: The Video Game. Maltese gaming company Mighty Box is grabbing headlines this week with the debut of its new browser-based game “Will Love Tear Us Apart,” inspired, as the title not-so-subtly suggests, by Joy Division’s classic 1980 anthem of pained love and longing, “Love Will Tear Us Apart.”

The Pet Shop Boys today released “Vocal,” the second single off the duo’s forthcoming 12th studio album, Electric — and you can now stream the full track here. The song’s premiere follows the release of lead single “Axis” and a preview last week of part of the track “Fluorescent.”

This week’s new releases include a new The Stranglers Box set, a 2CD/1DVD compilation from John Foxx, a new early-career best-of from The Fall, reissues from The Monochrome Set and Rip Rig + Panic, plus the U.S. release of the new triple-disc singles collection form post-punk legends Killing Joke.

Tonight’s edition of “Dark Wave” featured music from Dalis Car, Concrete Blonde, Cocteau Twins, Moev, Depeche Mode, ClockDVA, Red Lorry Yellow Lorry, The Danse Society, Controlled Bloeeding, Bigod 20, The Cure, Joy Division, Death Cult, The Jesus and Mary Chain and much, much more.

There very well could have been a full-fledged R.E.M. reunion in Portland, Ore., on Saturday night as all four members of the defunct college-rock superstars performed after Peter Buck’s wedding. But, by all appearances, they managed to avoid such headlines, just barely, by not actually sharing the stage together.

Andreas Thein — who co-founded Propaganda and co-wrote and performed on the German synthpop group’s debut single, 1984’s “Dr. Mabuse,” before being asked to leave the band — lost his battle with cancer and died this past Thursday, according to ZTT Records.

Welcome to the Week in Rock, where we round up all of the headlines posted on this site over the past week. This week featured posts about Talking Heads, Lou Reed, New Order, OMD, The Stranglers, Elvis Costello, Pet Shop Boys, Vince Clarke, The Church, David Bowie, New York’s WLIR and more.

No official reason was given when Lou Reed canceled his performances at Coachella and three other California concerts this spring, but now we know why: Reed recently underwent a liver transplant that was necessary to save his life, his wife Laurie Anderson tells The Times of London.