The readers of Slicing Up Eyeballs named The Cure’s grim third album ‘Faith’ as the best record of 1981, an accolade that led then-drummer Lol Tolhurst to reflect this week on that “very emotional and intense period of my life,” and thank fans for the fact that the album “still resonates with people all these years later.”

Eight months after first announcing plans for a new album, The Mission have convened in England to begin recording with producer David M. Allen — who has worked with The Cure, Depeche Mode, Wire and The Sisters of Mercy — and this week announced a new record deal and plans to release the album in September.

The 1991 self-titled debut from indie supergroup Electronic — featuring New Order frontman Bernard Sumner and guitarist Johnny Marr of The Smiths, with the occasional assist from Pet Shop Boys singer Neil Tennant — will be reissued in the U.K. next week in a 2CD expanded edition.

Exploring the legacy of ’80s college rock, Slicing Up Eyeballs airs every Tuesday at 10 p.m. Eastern/7 p.m. Pacific on Strangeways Radio. If you caught tonight’s episode, pop over to the Strangeways message board to leave comments or requests for future shows.

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark next week will release ‘English Electric’ — their second post-reunion album and 12th studio set overall — and, as is increasingly the case these days, you can now listen to the full record in advance of its actual release. Check it out via Pitchfork Advance.

As it does each year, Seattle’s KEXP has been posting video footage of sets by bands that played live on the air for the radio station during South By Southwest last month — the latest being a six-song, 35-minute set from Robyn Hitchcock, who played several songs off his just-released new album ‘Love From London.’

Public Image Ltd. will follow up this month’s Record Store Day reissue of debut 7-inch “Public Image” later this year with the band’s first-ever U.S. release of debut album ‘First Issue,’ which will be released in expanded 2CD and single-LP vinyl editions with “various bonus material.”

As fully expected after last week’s big leak, the lineup for this summer’s Lollapalooza festival in Chicago was announced today, with headliners that include The Cure and Nine Inch Nails, as well as an appearance by New Order. Check out the full lineup; single day tickets on sale Wednesday.

Today we unveil the results of Part 2 of our year-long Best of the ’80s feature, an ambitious, year-by-year poll of Slicing Up Eyeballs’ readers to determine just what were the best albums of each year of the 1980s — and then, when that’s all said and done at the end of 2013, we’ll run a best-of-the-decade poll.

On Record Store Day last year, Devo released a 2LP vinyl live set culled from a cassette recording made of the band’s Seattle stop on its 1981 tour in support of New Traditionlalists. Come next month, fans not into that whole vinyl thing will be able hear it, too, as the band releases the concert on CD — with two bonus tracks.

Another month, another Auto Reverse mixtape — two 45-minute sides of music new and vintage. But change is in the air: We’ve altered format slightly, moving from Soundcloud to Mixcloud for the streaming mixes, which, unfortunately, are no longer available for download.

This week’s new releases include brand-new studio albums from Seattle proto-grunge legends Mudhoney (‘Vanishing Point’), thrash masters Suicidal Tendencies (’13’), the Dead Kennedys’ Jello Biafra (‘White People and the Damage Done’) and Victor DeLorenzo of the Violent Femmes (‘Victor DeLorenzo’).

The Delta Machine promotional blitz hit U.K. television Saturday night as Depeche Mode appeared on “The Jonathan Ross Show” for a 10-minute interview segment with the seemingly pants-less host and a black-and-white performance of the album’s first single, “Heaven.”