Next year marks the 40th anniversary of The Cure’s recording debut, a milestone that’s already got fans wondering whether bandleader Robert Smith is preparing something special — speculation both aided and fueled by social media postings from current and former members.

Back in September, The Church stopped by the studios of Seattle’s KEXP radio ahead of its show that night at the Neptune Theater to perform a 25-minute set and interview. The radio station has just posted that footage online, and, as you can see here, the band performs two songs off its new album Man Woman Life Death Infinity.

Echo & The Bunnymen will release their first new album in four years next May, a collection called The Stars, The Oceans & The Moon that will feature “some of their greatest songs” re-recorded “with strings and things attached” along with a couple brand-new songs. The band also announced U.K. dates next year.

Tommy Keene, the influential singer-songwriter with a sharp ear for power-pop who emerged in the New Wave era and went on to work with admirers including R.E.M.’s Peter Buck, Paul Westerberg of The Replacements, and Guided By Voices’ Robert Pollard, died in his sleep Wednesday night, He was 59.

Midnight Oil last week wrapped its mammoth Great Circle 2017 worldwide reunion tour, playing to more than 500,000 people at concerts over the past seven months. But fans who didn’t catch it, or those who want to re-live it, are in luck: the band says it may release a live document next year. After that? “Who knows.”

Proclaiming 2018 “the year of Lawrence,” Cherry Red Records next February will reissue the first five studio albums by Felt — originally released between 1982 and 1986 — and release a new record by the indie-pop outfit’s single-named mastermind with his band Go-Kart Mozart. Full details right here.

Simple Minds this week announced plans to release a new album called Walk Between Worlds in February — the band’s first collection of new songs since 2014’s Big Music — and premiere the material at special three-part concerts in the U.K. and Europe following the record’s release. Full details here.

Record Rack: A round-up of the week’s new albums, expanded reissues and/or box sets, appearing each Monday on Slicing Up Eyeballs. All releases due out this Friday unless noted. This week’s releases include titles from the Ramones, The Fall, Big Country, Richard Hell and INXS.

“Dark Wave,” hosted by Slicing Up Eyeballs’ Matt Sebastian, airs 10 p.m. to 1 a.m. EDT every Sunday on Sirius XM satellite radio’s 1st Wave (Channel 33). The most recent two episodes also are available via Sirius XM’s On Demand service for online subscribers. See tonight’s full playlist right here.

R.E.M. famously only performed a single concert in support of  Automatic For the People, a benefit for Greenpeace at the 40 Watt Club in the band’s hometown of Athens, Ga., on Nov. 19, 1992. Audio from that show, previously issued as B-sides, is included as a bonus on the band’s recent Automatic reissue.

Scott McCaughey, leader of the Young Fresh Fellows and the Minus 5, and who spent 17 years as a touring guitarist and multi-instrumentalist for R.E.M., suffered a stroke while on a tour of the West Coast with Alejandro Escovedo, his wife announced today. He is in stable condition, but a long recovery is expected.

For this week’s installment of “120 Minutes” Rewind, we mark the recent, and untimely, passing of frontman Chuck Mosley with this “120 X-Ray” segment on Faith No More that was broadcast in 1987 following the release of the band’s second album Introduce Yourself. Watch the whole thing right here.

The John Darnielle-led Mountain Goats earlier this year released a concept album called Goths that was preceded by the first single “Andrew Eldritch is Moving Back to Leeds,” a notably un-gothlike song about the lead singer of The Sisters of Mercy. This week, they covered the Sisters’ 1987 classic “Lucretia My Reflection”