A long-in-the-works Paul McCartney tribute album finally arrives this November, and the first track to debut from The Art of McCartney is a rather faithful cover of The Beatles’ “Hello Goodbye” performed by The Cure with Sir Paul’s son James McCartney assisting on keyboards.
Simple Minds have finished recording their first new studio album in five years — and 17th overall — and while details of the record’s release aren’t yet known, the band had debuted a new song that presumably will appear on the forthcoming LP. You can stream that track, “Blindfolded,” right here.
In a move that once might have seemed unthinkable, New Order — a flagship act of the iconic Factory Records imprint — has signed to the equally legendary Mute label, long home to contemporaries Depeche Mode and Erasure, as the group continues to work on its new album.
While the reunion of The Mission continues — the band currently is touring South America — frontman Wayne Hussey is branching out on his own this fall with the release of a brand-new, 14-track solo album entitled Songs of Candlelight & Razorblades that will be supported by a massive, 50-date European tour.
Scruffy the Cat — part of the late-’80s cowpunk scene that helped spawn the alt-country movement — get their due in the coming months with both the full digital release of the band’s catalog and, on CD, the arrival of a new collection of previously unreleased live and studio material.
]Long-running U.K. post-punk act New Model Army follows up last year’s Between Dog and Wolf — the band’s 12th studio album, and first in four years — with a new collection in September entitled Between Wine and Blood that combines a mini album of six new studio tracks and an 11-song live album.
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.
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