This week’s Slicing Up Eyeballs headlines included items on Echo & The Bunnymen’s Ian McCulloch, New Order, R.E.M., PiL, The Housemartins, Bob Mould, Sinead O’Connor, Peter Gabriel and the Minutemen, plus the third installment of our Rhino ‘Just Can’t Get Enough — The ’80s’ Spotify playlist.
R.E.M. this week sent fan-club members the band’s final holiday single, capping a nearly 25-year-old tradition with a 2-track CD featuring live renditions of ‘Perfect Circle’ and ‘Life and How To Live It,’ the latter of which was recorded at the band’s last-ever concert in Mexico City in November 2008.
We’re back with Week 3 of the Rhino Records ‘Just Can’t Get Enough — The ’80s’ playlist we’re guest-curating on Spotify. This week’s installment features tasty selections from the likes of OMD, Pylon, The Stone Roses, Heaven 17, XTC, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Orange Juice, New Order and more.
The reunited New Order — featuring keyboardist Gillian Gilbert, but not bassist Peter Hook — apparently will perform in the U.S. for the first time in nearly seven years next March as part of the lineup of the electro-centric Ultra Music Festival in Miami.
With their first new studio album in 20 years due in 2012, John Lydon’s reunited Public Image Ltd. will kick off the new year by reissuing nearly its entire back catalog on CD in the U.K., using the same the same newly remastered editions that were released this past summer in Japan in the high-quality SHM-CD format.
Echo & The Bunnymen frontman Ian McCulloch will strike back out on his own next year with the release of both a new live album and his first solo record in nearly a decade — projects that he’ll support with a series of U.S. dates that so far include a single concert in San Francisco and two nights in Chicago in March.
]The A.V. Club recently caught up with Bob Mould for its ‘One Track Mind’ series and got the former Sugar frontman to discuss the creation of one of that band’s signature songs, ‘Hoover Dam.’ It’s an appropriate time to look back at Sugar’s work, since the band’s debut, ‘Copper Blue,’ turns 20 next year.
Q&A: Daniel Ash on Love and Rockets’ reunion, his new band — and figuring out how to play “So Alive” 
Q&A: Chris Frantz talks Talking Heads, Tom Tom Club and new book ‘Remain in Love’ 
Q&A: Steve Wynn on The Dream Syndicate’s first new album in nearly 30 years 
Q&A: Bauhaus’ David J on his ‘accidental’ concept album ‘Not Long For This World’ 
Q&A: Peter Murphy on ‘Ninth,’ Bauhaus’ break-up, reuniting Dalis Car 
Q&A: Joey Santiago on Pixies’ ‘Doolittle’ tour, possible ‘Surfer Rosa’ shows, new album talk 
Q&A: Prefab Sprout’s Paddy McAloon on new album, changing the world with music 
Q&A: Peter Hook talks ‘Unknown Pleasures’ tour, re-recording Joy Division 