This week’s Slicing Up Eyeballs Music Hour on Strangeways Radio was devoted to the Best of 1986, featuring music from XTC, Love and Rockets, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Smiths, R.E.M., Pet Shop Boys, Depeche Mode, Concrete Blonde, The Smithereens and more.

Billy Bragg will celebrate the 30th anniversary of his debut album Life’s a Riot with Spy vs. Spy — featuring the singer-songwriter’s classic “A New England” — next month with a new reissue that features a newly remastered version of the original record plus a live solo version of the full album recorded in London.

Mazzy Star — the reunited dream-pop duo that David Roback of Rain Parade and Opal formed in the late ’80s with then-future Jesus and Mary Chain collaborator Hope Sandoval — this week announced a 14-date North American tour this fall in support of Seasons of Your Day, the group’s first new album in 17 years.

Peter Hook’s North American tour gets underway tonight in Boston — he’ll be performing New Order’s first two albums, 1981′s Movement and 1983′s Power, Corruptions & Lies, in their entirety each night — and the bassist is using the occasion to drop by “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” when the trek hits New York.

The third round of 5 Albums box sets from reissue label Beggars Archive — pitched to fans as “the last chance to present (these) albums as physical releases in the foreseeable future” — will collect full albums, singles and assorted bonus tracks from Bauhaus, Fields of the Nephilim and Gene Loves Jezebel.

Synthpop duo Erasure will get festive this fall with a brand-new holiday album called Snow Globe that will include both original compositions and “seasonal classics” — a collection that singer Andy Bell says led him to rediscover his “inner choirboy.” The album is set to be released Nov. 11.

My Bloody Valentine will follow up last month’s short run of concerts in the western U.S. with eight more dates this November in support of their long-delayed comeback record mbv, this time hitting select cities in the eastern half of the United States — namely Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia and New York — and Canada

This week’s new releases include two different box sets and a new best-of from The Clash, plus Ministry’s farewell album, new music from Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon and Juliana Hatfield of Blake Babies, a new Boomtown Rats best-of and a compilation of Rank & File’s first two albums.

Welcome to the Week in Rock, where we round up all of the headlines posted on this site over the past week. This week featured posts about the Pixies, The Wedding Present, Tears For Fears, Camper Van Beethoven and more — plus The Smiths topped the Slicing Up Eyeballs Top 100 Albums of 1986 poll.

The Pixies have been rehearsing for their upcoming tour with new bassist Kim Shattuck of The Muffs in Los Angeles this past week, so perhaps it’s no surprise the band headed out last night for a last-minute, surprise warm-up show at the Echo — where the band debuted six of their new songs.

The Wedding Present will embark on an extensive reissue campaign later this years as Edsel Records re-releases much of David Gedge and Co.’s ’80s and ’90s output — five albums, two compilations and an EP — in expanded multi-disc sets crammed with as-yet-unspecified bonus material in both audio and video form.

For this week’s “120 Minutes” Rewind, we head back to 1988 for this “120 X-Ray” spotlighting what Kurt Loder refers to as “the biggest cult band in the land”: Camper Van Beethoven. This segment was filmed in Miami Beach, Fla., while the band was on tour in support of Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart.

Tears For Fears this week teased their upcoming 30th anniversary box set dedicated to landmark debut album The Hurting by sharing one of the tracks that will appear on the four-disc set: the original 12-inch mix of “Pale Shelter,” which the band notes “was a hit in NY clubs and the UK dance charts.”