The second round of 5 Albums box sets from Beggars Archive — promoted as “the last chance to present (these) albums as physical releases in the foreseeable future” — will collect full albums, live recordings and assorted bonus tracks from The Fall, The Icicle Works and Buffalo Tom, and should be out by July.
The Clash return to record stores in a big way this September, with the release of a 12-disc box set called Sound System — featuring five of the band’s six albums, a DVD with unseen footage and three discs’ worth of demos, non-album singles, rarities and B-sides — as well as a new double-disc best-of set.
New Order will mark its highly successful reunion with the release this summer of a new 13-track live album recorded at the U.K.’s Bestival last September, according to the NME. Live at Bestival 2012 will be released July 8 in the U.K. via CD and download, with all profits going to the Isle of Wight Youth Trust.
EMI Music will reissue The Stranglers’ 1992 box set The Old Testament: The U.A. Studio Recordings (1977-1982), which collects the punk legends’ first six albums plus bonus singles and B-sides on four CDs, and now includes a brand-new fifth disc of rarities including live tracks, radio edits and remixes.
Fire Records today announced plans to reissue the full catalog of mind-bending ’80s psych-rockers Spacemen 3 — featuring Peter “Sonic Boom” Kember and a pre-Spiritualized Jason “J. Spaceman” Pierce — on 180-gram colored vinyl, beginning next week with the band’s first two studio LPs and a follow-up live set.
Big Country this summer will release a four-disc box set that compiles the Scottish rockers’ BBC studio sessions, live concert appearances and performances on TV shows such as “Top of the Pops,” a collection Universal Music says “charts the spectacular rise” of the band through the ’80s.
Pet Shop Boys today announced full details of their forthcoming album Electric — the second release from Chris Lowe and Neil Tennant in less than a year — and revealed the itinerary for a month-long, 19-date tour that will bring the duo back to North America for the first time in four years this September and October.
Back in February, Cherry Red Records unveiled the tracklist for its massive, 5-disc box set Scared To Get Happy: A Story of Indie-Pop 1980-1989 via the project’s Facebook page — and then almost immediately began adding more tracks to the 127-song collection.
Lloyd Cole returns to more electric sounds this summer with the release of ‘Standards,’ a new 11-track album that finds the singer-songwriter reuniting with part of the team — Matthew Sweet on bass and co-producer/drummer Fred Maher — behind Cole’s 1990 self-titled solo debut, the so-called “X” album.
Mark E. Smith’s iconic post-punk act The Fall returns next month with ‘Re-Mit,’ the band’s 30th studio album in 37 years — a 12-track collection that will be preceded by a 7-inch single on Record Store Day and followed by a nine-date tour of the U.K. in May and early June.
Skinny Puppy return late next month with their 12th studio album in 30 years, a timely 10-song collection called Weapon that the band’s publicists say stands as a philosophical commentary on “the concurrent glorification of the gun culture and simultaneous horror at the devastation guns can cause.”
Ian McCulloch next month will release a new 2CD set called ‘Holy Ghosts’ that combines the fan-funded studio album ‘Pro Patria Mori’ he released in limited quantities last year with an unreleased 15-track live set of “orchestral reworkings” of solo tracks and Bunnymen classics recorded last May.
Dead Can Dance will commemorate its ongoing reunion with a new live CD called ‘In Concert’ that also will be released in expanded digital and triple-vinyl formats, capturing performances from the band’s 2012 U.S. tour. You can preview the set through a free download of the live version of “Children of the Sun.”
Sparks — aka brothers Ron and Russell Mael — this month will release their first-ever live album, a 2CD set called Two Hands One Mouth recorded on their European tour last year that found the duo performing for the first time without a full band or computers — a show they’re bringing to Los Angeles and San Francisco this spring.
The double-disc, 26-track best-of set from Australian rockers Midnight Oil that was released Down Under last fall will receive a belated American release April 30 via Columbia/Legacy, the label announced today. Essential Oils offers a career-spanning overview of the band’s catalog.
Not much of a surprise given Steven Severin’s recent hint, but the lone album by The Glove — 1983′s ‘Blue Sunshine’ — will be reissued as an individually numbered 2LP set on blue vinyl for Record Store Day next month, featuring not just the full album but the 16 demos originally included on the 2006 expanded CD reissue.
The 20th anniversary reissue of the The Breeders’ ‘Last Splash’ will come in a mammoth 7-disc vinyl box set that features the original record, a live album recorded in Stockholm, a collection of previously unreleased demos, non-album tracks and BBC session cuts, and four individual EPs repressed on 10-inch platters.
Crime and the City Solution — which, during the ’80s, included members of The Birthday Party, Swell Maps and Einstürzende Neubauten — will release its first new album in 23 years next month, and they’ve just dropped the first video from the record, a clip for opening track “Goddess,” which you can see right here.
Alison Moyet today announced an extensive, 24-date tour of the U.K. and Ireland this fall in support of her upcoming album ‘the minutes’ — that’s the just-revealed cover art posted above — and said the concerts will place the new album “center stage” and focus on “significant electronic material in her back catalog.”
