This week’s link round-up includes a podcast featuring vintage tape of John Peel interviewing the Pixies’ Black Francis, news of The Stone Roses’ upcoming biography, an interview with director Peter Care about the making of R.E.M.’s iconic ‘Drive’ video and a Q&A with Gary Numan about his new album ‘Dead Son Rising.’
The long-awaited This Mortal Coil anthology first announced a year ago — a 4CD box set featuring the 4AD collective’s three albums and a fourth disc of singles and rarities — finally will be released this November, while a Blu-ray disc called Tears in the Dropbox that includes all three albums in HD audio remains in the works.
In December 1988, when Dinosaur Jr entered Boston’s famed Fort Apache Studios, to record a track for ‘The Bridge: A Tribute to Neil Young,’ they cut not one but two songs: ‘Lotta Love,’ which would be included on the disc alongside covers by the Pixies, The Flaming Lips and Sonic Youth, and ‘I’ve Been Waiting For You.’
Before taking the Pixies back out on the road this fall for more ‘Doolittle’ dates, frontman Black Francis will embark on a short solo-acoustic tour of his own — beginning tonight — and he’ll follow that up in September with a brand-new studio album he recorded as a duo with singer-songwriter Reid Paley.
The Pixies will bring their seemingly never-ending tour celebrating the 20th anniversary of ‘Doolittle’ — a record that’s now actually 22 years old — back to the U.S. for another round of 19 dates in October and November, this time ‘playing cities we’ve never visited across the U.S. of A.’
Indie buzz band Surfer Blood covers the Pixies classic “Gigantic” in this week’s installment of The AV Club’s Undercover series, in which bands drop in on the site’s Chicago offices and pick a song off a predetermined list to cover live in a very small room.
The latest installment of the AV Club’s ‘Undercover’ series finds Rocky Votolato and the members of Matt Pond PA doing a stripped-down take on The Human League’s 1981 synthpop classic ‘Don’t You Want Me.’ Check out the video here.
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 