This week’s new releases include a “re-imagined and re-recorded” version of Blancmange’s 1982 debut Happy Families, plus the second album from J Mascis’ Sweet Apple, a new record from Off!, featuring Keith Morris of Black Flag, new Kirsty MacColl anthology, and a new studio album from John Frusciante.

Since reuniting last summer for their first shows in 22 years, The Replacements have been nothing if not cagey about their intentions, and that continues with the band’s posting on Facebook this afternoon of an unexplained 12-second clip of “Can’t Hardly Wait” being performed live in an undisclosed recording studio.

Last night at the venerable 40 Watt Club in Athens, Ga., Drivin’ N Cryin’ paid tribute to late guitarist Buren Fowler, who played with that band from 1988 to 1993 after working as Peter Buck’s guitar tech and an occasional second guitarist on two R.E.M. tours.

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 news about the The Cure, New Order, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Throwing Muses, John Lydon, Midnight Oil, Peter Murphy, The Replacements, Gary Numan, Bob Mould and more.

Last night, Hunters & Collectors brought its 2014 tour to Sydney for the first of two club dates at the Enmore Theatre, and treated fans to an encore surprise, inviting Peter Garrett and Jim Moginie of Midnight Oil onstage to help blast through a cover of The Saints’ “Know Your Product.”

John Lydon will tour North American arenas this summer, but not with Public Image Ltd. or the Sex Pistols — no, the erstwhile Johnny Rotten will play King Herod in a new touring production of “Jesus Christ Superstar” that also will feature members of Incubus, *NSYNC and Destiny’s Child.

Peter Murphy today debuted the first single off his upcoming 10th solo album Lion, a record produced by bassist Youth of Killing Joke that finds the former Bauhaus frontman delving, perhaps not surprisingly, into heavier sounds than he explored on 2011′s Ninth.

By now you’ve heard about R.E.M.’s Mike Mills breaking the news of David Letterman’s retirement yesterday, but here’s the reason he was even there: Mills and former bandmate Peter Buck reunited on “The Late Show” to back Joseph Arthur’s performance of “Walk on the Wild Side.”

It’s perhaps not surprising that The Replacements’ reunion has been a ramshackle affair, with the band playing three festivals last year, and, at this point, slated to perform five more times this spring and summer. To hear bassist Tommy Stinson tell it, that may continue for a while.

Gary Numan’s just about done with this North American tour to promote last year’s Splinter (Songs From a Broken Mind), but he’s still found time to slip out a new music video for the record’s “I Am Dust” — an effects-heavy clip that’s meant to recall the glitchy old days of VHS tapes with tracking problems.

Throwing Muses played a handful of U.S. dates earlier this year, and while the band was in Seattle, Kristin Hersh and Co. stopped by KEXP for an on-air session during which they performed four tracks off last year’s sprawling double album Purgatory/Paradise, and discussed the comeback record.

Tonight’s Slicing Up Eyeballs Music Hour on Strangeways Radio featured new music from Bob Mould, The Afghan Whigs, Echo & The Bunnymen, Chrissie Hynde and the Pixies, plus old favorites from The B-52s, Talking Heads, Big Country, Peter Murphy, New Order, Johnny Thunders and more.

Originally due out last October, “Barbed Wire Kisses” — a 272-page biography of The Jesus and Mary Chain by music journalist and author Zoë Howe — is now set to be published in the U.S. and U.K. on May 19, but the paperback will be available a full month early, on Record Store Day, in the U.K.