Our round-up of the past week’s highlights on Slicing Up Eyeballs includes posts about Duran Duran, Big Country, Peter Gabriel, Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo, Pet Shop Boys, R.E.M. and Brian Eno, Morrissey, Killing Joke and The Stone Roses — plus our free November mixtape.

The Pet Shop Boys not only are expecting to release a new studio album in 2012, they’re currently assembling a brand-new B-sides compilation — a sequel to 1995’s 2CD set ‘Alternative’ that will be called ‘Format,’ and span the years 1996 to 2009 — for release in February, the duo revealed in a new interview this week.

Our round-up of last week’s Slicing Up Eyeballs headlines includes news about New Order, R.E.M., Wall of Voodoo, Pet Shop Boys, Peter Murphy, INXS, Kate Bush and more, plus a new Slicing Up Eyeballs mixtape and a contest to win the new B-52s live album.

Having wrapped their global Pandemonium Tour with a final show last December, the Pet Shop Boys now are at work writing material for their upcoming 11th album, which they hope to begin recording next month and then release sometime next year, singer Neil Tennant says in a recent post to the band’s official website.

Today marks the birthday of Neil Tennant — he’s 57 — and we celebrate by presenting the Pet Shop Boys’ earliest concert film, ‘Highlights.’ Released on VHS in 1990, this short film — which has yet to be released on DVD — features eight songs performed at London’s Wembley Arena in July 1989 during the duo’s MCMLXXXIX Tour.

Better known as the half of the Pet Shop Boys that wears hats and stands motionless behind banks of keyboards, Chris Lowe takes a rare vocal turn on a new cover of New Order’s ‘Subculture’ by Finnish DJ/producers Jori Hulkkonen and Alex Nieminen, performing under the name Stop Modernists.