Long rumored to be making a return to the live arena following last year’s extensive reissue campaign, The Jesus and Mary Chain is set to play its first concerts in four years next month with a short run of U.S. dates that includes stops at the 35 Denton festival in Denton, Texas, and South By Southwest.

It’s Madchester all over again as the Happy Mondays will reunite their original lineup this spring for an 11-date tour of the U.K. and Ireland — and backing singer Rowetta is even suggesting the group would like to open for The Stone Roses at that band’s massive Manchester reunion gigs this summer.

New Order — Bernard Sumner, Stephen Morris, Gillian Gilbert , 2000s-era guitarist Phil Cunningham and Bad Lieutenant bassist Tom Chapman — continues to expand its 2012 touring plans, today announcing a four-date U.K. tour this spring in addition to its first confirmed European summer festivals.

Pulp’s trip across the pond to play the two-weekend Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival this April brings added benefit to fans in New York City and San Francisco, as Jarvis Cocker and Co. this morning announced gigs in those cities — as well as a Spanish festival date — on the band’s website.

The original five-person lineup of Scottish indie-pop outfit Close Lobsters — immortalized on the NME’s genre-defining C86 compilation cassette — will reunite for the first time since 1989 for a very brief ‘People of Europe Rise Up Tour’ this spring and summer that so far features performances in Madrid, Glasgow and Berlin.

The reunited fIREHOSE — the band formed by Mike Watt and George Hurley following the 1985 death of their Minutemen bandmate D. Boon — will precede its appearances at April’s two-weekend Coachella Festival with an 11-date club tour of the western U.S. — the trio’s first concerts since splitting in 1994.