Johnny Marr returns this October with what’s being billed as his sophomore solo album, the 11-song Playland, a collection of new music built “around a common theme of ‘songs that move at the speed of life’” that arrives just 18 months after the release of his first official solo record, The Messenger.
Midge Ure returns this August with his first new solo album in more than a decade, a 10-song set called Fragile that he’ll promote by joining the 13-date Retro Futura Tour later this summer alongside Thompson Twins’ Tom Bailey, Howard Jones, China Crisis and Katrina of Katrina & The Waves.
After years of touring under the English Beat banner, frontman Dave Wakeling now is turning his attention to recording brand-new music, launching a PledgeMusic campaign to help crowdfund a new record that would be the Beat’s first since 1982′s Special Beat Service.
Now that he’s out of rehab, Ministry mastermind Al Jourgensen’s getting back to the business of being Al Jourgensen, and that means putting out a live album. getting the band back for a new tour and, last but not least, trying his hand at being a TV weatherman.
Like Mission of Burma, Scottish indie-pop faves The Vaselines are on their way to becoming more prolific post-reunion than in their original incarnation, this week announcing their second post-reunion album, and only their third overall, called V for Vaselines.
Robyn Hitchcock this August will release a brand-new, Joe Boyd-produced album titled The Man Upstairs that will be “part well-known favorites, part personal discoveries, and part originals,” according to Yep Roc Records. The first offering off the record is an acoustic take on the Psychedelic Furs’ classic “The Ghost in You.”
The 8-Bit Operators collective next month follows up its tributes to Kraftwerk, Devo and The Beatles with a new collection of chiptune covers of Depeche Mode classics, a 15-track collection featuring “highly musical, lo-bit video-game hardware re-imaginings” of some of the band’s best-known songs from the past 30 years.
Erasure today announce the release of its 16th studio album this fall, a 10-track record titled The Violet Flame that will be followed by a massive 58-date world tour that will mostly see Andy Bell and Vince Clarke play venues in the U.S. and U.K. between mid-September and the end of 2014.
He may be releasing an expanded vinyl reissue of 1983′s Soul Mining next month, but Matt Johnson isn’t only looking backward: He’s recorded not one but two new film soundtracks under the The The banner, new music composed for the independent films “Hyena” and “Penthouse North.”
The Mission is following up last year’s reunion album The Brightest Light with a brand-new EP that will feature four new songs that each are sung by a different member of the band — plus, for those who purchase the digital version, a bonus fifth track in the form of a cover of Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower.”
A new 50-song compilation of early R.E.M. material called Complete Rarities: I.R.S. 1982-1987 is due out digitally next month, but appears to be largely, if not completely, comprised of tracks previously assembled on 1987′s out-of-print Dead Letter Office, a more recent I.R.S. years best-of and singles.
Keith Levene, founding member of both The Clash and Public Image Ltd., plans to resurrect what was to be PiL’s fourth album —1984′s Commercial Zone, released in two different incarnations — and “enhance it with original material,” finishing the album 30 years later.
Paul Weller this June will follow up 1998′s Modern Classics compilation with a new companion best-of — cleverly titled More Modern Classics — that will pick up where the previous set left off, collecting 20 favorites by the former Jam leader recorded over the past 15 years, including a brand-new single.
Upset by “ever more negative interpretations” of the interview he conducted last weekend, Robert Smith took to The Cure’s website today to explain his plans to finally release the remainder of the music recorded for 2008′s 4:13 Dream, revealing that it will be issued across two different albums.
Back in February, The Cure announced ambitious plans for 2014, including the release of a new album — the companion to 2008′s 4:13 Dream — as well as a third round of “Trilogy” shows worldwide, which would find the band performing The Top, The Head on the Door and Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me.
Cocteau Twins guitarist Robin Guthrie and Ride frontman Mark Gardener have completed their long-in-the-works album together — a collaboration they debuted with their 2012 single “The Places We Go” — and will release the record worldwide this September, Gardener announced this week.
After 37 years at the helm of The Pretenders, iconic frontwoman Chrissie Hynde is going solo, announcing plans to release her first-ever album under her own name, an 11-song collection called Stockholm that’s due out on June 9 and is preceded by the single “Dark Sunglasses.”
The Pixies today announced the release of the third in their series of self-released vinyl-and-digital EPs over the last seven months, and now will compile all 12 new songs released since last summer’s “Bagboy” digital single as a full-length album that will make the band’s new music available on CD.
Peter Murphy returns with brand-new music late this spring as he releases his much-anticipated 10th album Lion, an 11-track collection produced by Killing Joke bassist Youth that the former Bauhaus frontman previewed in rough form over the PA before concerts on his 2013 tour.
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