This week’s new releases include brand-new studio albums from Iggy and The Stooges (‘Ready to Die’), The Blow Monkeys (‘Feels Like a New Morning’) and Big Country (‘The Journey’), plus a Melvins cover album (‘Everybody Loves Sausages’) and a Midnight Oil best-of (‘Essential Oils’).

Morrissey today unveiled a new U.S. tour next year that includes 24 dates rescheduled from his postponed fall tour (two shows are not being made up) plus eight newly added concerts in New York, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Texas. Plus, Moz’s big L.A. arena show now features Patti Smith as guest rather The Stooges.

After postponing 26 shows to return to England to see his ailing mother, Morrissey is expected to announce his rescheduled North American tour on Monday, but a number of new U.S. dates already have surfaced online, including the tour’s highest-profile gig: an arena concert in Los Angeles.

After performing a handful of stateside dates late last fall and earlier this spring, Morrissey tonight announce his most extensive U.S. tour in years, a 33-date, coast-to-coast trek that will keep him on the road from early October through early December — and includes a Los Angeles arena date with Iggy and the Stooges.

The Jesus and Mary Chain will join headliners Iggy and the Stooges and Elvis Costello at this September’s punk-heavy Riot Fest 2012 in Chicago, promoters announced this week, marking the latest U.S. date to be added to the slow-roll out of the Mary Chain’s still-evolving summer North American tour.

Legendary Minutemen bassist Mike Watt this May will publish a new book called ‘On and Off Bass’ that combines his 2000s-era tour diaries with his nature photography, and he’ll launch the memoir with a pair of release parties — including a New York show that’ll find him jamming with Dinosaur Jr’s J Mascis and Murph.

This week’s new releases include Record Store Day-related reissues from R.E.M., Sonic Youth and Devo, plus the expanded edition of Iggy and the Stooges’ classic ‘Raw Power,’ and a new Revolting Cocks album.