Five years ago today — at precisely 10:37 p.m. MST on Feb. 20, 2009 — Slicing Up Eyeballs launched so very inauspiciously, with just a simple 91-word post announcing plans to provide “the latest info on new albums, reissues, upcoming reunions and tour dates.”

Today marks the 30th anniversary of the genre-shaping debut album from The Smiths, the John Porter-produced self-titled effort that remains, these three decades later, a point of contention among fans: Did these recordings best represent Morrissey and Marr’s early songs?

Originally released in 1993, Star — the debut album from ex-Throwing Muses member Tanya Donelly’s band Belly — will receive its first-ever American vinyl release later this year when Plain Recordings reissues the title on 180-gram vinyl, the label announced on Facebook.

After three brief tours of the U.S. in 2012 in support of 5CD box set Arkeology, Karl Wallinger is bringing World Party back to America this spring for the group’s longest trek in years: a run of 25 dates opening May 24 in Boston and wrapping up June 29 in Solana Beach, Calif.

The Sisters of Mercy continue to expand their summer touring plans, this week adding three more shows in the U.K. and Ireland onto the end of their growing itinerary, which already was hitting Europe for a 12-date run and now goes beyond what had appeared to be an isolated July appearance at Sonisphere.

Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band performed Wednesday night in Sydney, Australia, and, as the band has been known to do, added a bit of local flavor to its set, performing, for the first time ever, a cover of INXS’ classic 1982 single “Don’t Change” to a very appreciative crowd of Aussies.

Devo fans are mourning another loss this morning with news that, less than eight months after the death of beloved drummer Alan Myers, one of the band’s original members, Bob “Bob 2” Casale, has died unexpectedly from “conditions that lead to heart failure,” the band announced on Facebook today.

The reunited Afghan Whigs this morning offered fans their first taste of upcoming seventh album Do To The Beast with the premiere on Spotify of the first track off that release: “Algiers,” a four-minute, mostly acoustic ballad that’s dirtied up, in the middle, with a fuzzed-out electric-guitar solo,

Now that the dust has settled from the controversial Best Albums of the ’80s poll, it’s time to get back to the voting. And next up will be a poll to determine the best EPs and mini-albums of the ’80s — basically, that somewhat ambiguous class of release that’s too long to be a single yet not quite long enough to be a full LP.

Back in 2011, the good folks at Rhino Records requested we take a stab at curating their ‘Just Can’t Get Enough: The ’80s’ playlist on Spotify — and now that the label’s launched its own app within Spotify, we’ve been asked to freshen it up with 25 new tracks representing the classic ’80s alternative era.

This week’s new releases include the second solo album from R.E.M.’s Peter Buck, as well as a new studio record from Suzanne Vega, a reissue of the debut album from New Zealand’s Verlaines and a reissue of a Shane MacGowan & The Popes live CD/DVD set.

Echo & The Bunnymen today revealed that the band’s upcoming 12th studio album — produced by Killing Joke bassist Youth — is nearing completion and will be formally announced soon, and that frontman Ian McCulloch “feels it’s the band’s best work for a very long time.”

Just hours after announcing a pair of high-profile arena concerts in New York and Los Angeles, Morrissey this morning has unveiled a full 25-date U.S. tour this May and June that will hit many of the cities and venues that saw cancellations during the former Smiths singer’s disastrous late-2012 and early-2013 American tour.