Our good friends at Strangeways Radio are putting together a week-in-review video series called Alt. Rewind that recaps the news posted at Slicing Up Eyeballs and on the Strangeways site throughout the preceding week, hosted by Velvet Rebel. Check out the latest installment right here.

R.E.M. famously didn’t tour behind 1991’s breakthrough Out of Time, but the band did play a handful of largely professional shows that year, among the best-known of them being a pair of concerts in London under the nom-de-rock of Bingo Hand Job. See the full details and tracklist right here.

Saying he’s “looking forward to running through my back pages,” Billy Bragg has announced a 2019 tour of the U.S. that will see him performing three nights in each city, performing his current set the first night, then two shows that focus on clusters of his early albums. Full dates and details here.

Record Rack: A round-up of the week’s new albums, expanded reissues and/or box sets, appearing each Monday on Slicing Up Eyeballs. All releases due out this Friday unless noted. This week’s releases include a new mini-album from Billy Bragg and the UK release of INXS’s ‘Kick 30’ box set.

Sticking to his plan to release one-off songs inspired by the current political tumult, Billy Bragg has followed his raw, electric “The Sleep of Reason” — which addressed rising nationalism — with a quieter, climate-change themed song called “King Tide and the Sunny Day Flood.” Stream it here.

Three months after announcing plans to go into “one-man Clash mode” on tour this fall, Billy Bragg this morning released the first of several new songs inspired by the current political tumult, a track called “The Sleep of Reason” that addresses nationalism in the U.S. and Europe. Here the full song here.

No stranger to mixing politics and performance, Billy Bragg is grabbing his guitar and heading out on tour “in one-man Clash mode” this fall, taking his Bridges Not Walls tour to the U.S., U.K. and Europe for 30 shows this October and November. The tour hits the U.S. first, with 10 shows between Oct. 1 and 16.

The Cure’s penchant for topping festival bills continues as Robert Smith and Co. were announced this evening as the headliners of all three Riot Fests — set for Toronto, Chicago and Denver this September — joining the band’s appearance at Bottle Rock in Napa Valley, Calif., this month.

This week’s new releases include the first new studio album from The Afghan Whigs in 16 years, plus a box set of Dead Kennedys 7-inch singles, a live CD/DVD package from Billy Bragg, an anthology of Ski Patrol’s recorded output and a vinyl reissue of The Stone Roses’ legendary debut.

This week’s new releases include box sets devoted to Tears For Fears and Waterboys albums, plus a new Morrissey concert film, a reissue of Billy Bragg’s debut, a box set collecting six Boomtown Rats albums, an audiophile CD pressing from the Pixies and live sets from The Mission and The Wedding Present.

Billy Bragg will celebrate the 30th anniversary of his debut album Life’s a Riot with Spy vs. Spy — featuring the singer-songwriter’s classic “A New England” — next month with a new reissue that features a newly remastered version of the original record plus a live solo version of the full album recorded in London.

Seattle’s KEXP continues to post video footage of sets by bands that played live on the air for the radio station during South By Southwest last month, and the latest is a six-song, 33-minute set by Billy Bragg, who treated fans to four songs off his just released album Tooth & Nail, plus two old favorites.

As one of our readers noted this morning, Morrissey finally got the answer to the question he posed of Margaret Thatcher in his controversial Viva Hate closer “Margaret on the Guillotine”: “When will you die?” The former British prime minister passed away today at age 87.