A new 700-page biography of The Smiths by music writer and biographer Tony Fletcher will be published in the U.K. next week — but not in the U.S. until December — and promises, through “extensive research, dozens of interviews and unprecedented access,” to tell “the complete story” of the iconic Manchester band.

Our latest collection of links includes a report The Stone Roses will release a new album in 2013, plus interviews with former Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr, frontman Robbie Grey of the recently reunited Modern English and members of Mission of Burma, who just released a new album, ‘Unsound.’

Welcome to the Week in Rock, where we round up all of the headlines posted on this site over the past week. This edition includes items about INXS, Depeche Mode, My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult, Johnny Marr, Alison Moyet, The Cure, Public Image Ltd., The Dream Syndicate, Franke Goes to Hollywood, The Fixx and more.

Last night at the famed Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland, producers and musicians Nile Rodgers and Mark Ronson enlisted Johnny Marr and Alison Moyet, who joined the Rodgers-led Chic on stage to perform Ronson’s arrangement of The Smiths’ “Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before.”

This week’s round-up of Slicing Up Eyeballs headlines includes news about My Bloody Valentine, The Smiths, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Depeche Mode, The Cult, The Charlatans, Duran Duran and Men Without Hats — plus a new Peter Gabriel live CD giveaway.

The Internet was abuzz this morning with rumors of a reunion by The Smiths this fall, fueled by a report from Music-News.com that the band “are to throw their differences aside and return to the live stage this autumn.” After having a bit of fun with the rumors on Twitter, though, Johnny Marr quickly denied the report.

Last September, we gave away a copy of the CD-and-vinyl version of The Smiths’ ‘Complete’ box set to one lucky Slicing Up Eyeballs reader, and now, with the newly remastered albums released individually, the fine folks at Rhino Records have provided us with three copies of the 8-disc CD box set to give away.

If you didn’t buy The Smiths’ ‘Complete’ box set last year because you’d rather cherry pick which albums to get, you’re in luck: Later this month, Rhino Records will release, in the U.K., standalone CD editions of each title in the set — all four of the band’s studio album, plus three compilations and a live album.

Today we round up the last two weeks of Slicing Up Eyeballs headlines, including stories on Morrissey, New Order, Ministry, They Might Be Giants and more, plus the results of our readers poll, of which Duran Duran was the big winner.

Having left The Cribs and reunited his early-2000s band The Healers, ex-Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr today offers up a free holiday track recorded with his bandmates: the 3-minute-and-40-second instrumental ‘Free Christmas,’ which can be streamed and/or downloaded here.

Twenty-five years ago today, The Smiths performed what would prove to be the band’s final concert, a 15-song set at London’s Brixton Academy as part of a rescheduled benefit for Artists Against Apartheid. Watch that full Dec. 12, 1986, concert here.

The limited-edition Joy Division box set comprised of 10 newly remastered 7-inch singles that was released late last year is being reissued next month — this time on compact disc, collecting ‘CD replicas of 10 singles presented in a beautiful clamshell box.’

American Laundromat Records has enlisted The Wedding Present, Built to Spill’s Doug Martsch, Throwing Muses co-founder Tanya Donelly, Telekinesis and Stars to contribute covers of more than 20 classic songs by The Smiths for a new tribute album to be released this December.