This week’s headlines at Slicing Up Eyeballs — you know, in case you missed anything — included a lot of news about the now-defunct R.E.M., plus items on Public Image Ltd., The Jesus and Mary Chain, This Mortal Coil, Scruffy the Cat and Siouxsie and the Banshees.

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.

When former Dead Can Dance member Brendan Perry’s joint North American tour with Cocteau Twins co-founder Robin Guthrie rolled through Seattle last month, the acclaimed musicians dropped by the studios of indie-leaning public-radio outlet KEXP, where the 4AD veterans each performed a selection of their own songs live on the air.

This week’s new releases include The The’s soundtrack to the film ‘Tony’; a new best-of from Scritti Politti; Mike Watt’s punk opera ‘Hyphenated-Man’; the second album from Steve Wynn’s The Baseball Project; a new OMD single; and This Mortal Coil on vinyl.

Beggars Archive is readying a major This Mortal Coil re-release campaign, featuring a new 4CD box set, individual vinyl and CD reissues of the 4AD collective’s three studio albums, and a hi-def Blu-ray release that collects all of the band’s records and music videos on a single disc.

The canonization of the Pixies’ beloved Doolittle continues with Beggars Archives’ just-announced plans to release an “Omnibus Edition” of the 1989 album, with a new surround mix, the record’s demos and possibly a Blu-ray included in the expanded box set.

Expanded box-set reissues of Bauhaus’ first two albums — In the Flat Field and Mask — will help inaugurate the new Beggars Archive series of […]