With their first new studio album in 20 years due in 2012, John Lydon’s reunited Public Image Ltd. will kick off the new year by reissuing nearly its entire back catalog on CD in the U.K., using the same the same newly remastered editions that were released this past summer in Japan in the high-quality SHM-CD format.

Echo & The Bunnymen frontman Ian McCulloch will strike back out on his own next year with the release of both a new live album and his first solo record in nearly a decade — projects that he’ll support with a series of U.S. dates that so far include a single concert in San Francisco and two nights in Chicago in March.

]The A.V. Club recently caught up with Bob Mould for its ‘One Track Mind’ series and got the former Sugar frontman to discuss the creation of one of that band’s signature songs, ‘Hoover Dam.’ It’s an appropriate time to look back at Sugar’s work, since the band’s debut, ‘Copper Blue,’ turns 20 next year.

For this week’s installment of Vintage Video we spotlight a band we don’t get to write about often enough on this site: The Housemartins, the self-declared ‘fourth best band in Hull.’ You can see the indie-pop band perform a 23-minute set for the ‘Hold Tight!’ program on the U.K.’s Granada Television in June 1986.

Our latest link round-up is all Manchester: The Smiths’ Andy Rourke will appear on Sirius XM’s 1st Wave all weekend, plus New Order has announced a New Zealand concert next year, The Stone Roses have booked festival slots in Norway and Portugal, and Peter Hook will play Joy Division songs in the UK next May and June.

Peter Gabriel is soliciting his fans for any ‘So’-era memorabilia they may still have as he continues work on a 25th anniversary reissue of the 1986 album for release next year — a package that may include a re-edited, full-length version of the Martin Scorsese-produced concert film ‘PoV.’

This week’s installment of Slicing Up Eyeballs on Strangeways Radio featured new music from Sinead O’Connor, new Smiths covers by The Wedding Present and Built to Spill’s Doug Martsch, and selections from The Ocean Blue, Julian Cope, Green on Red, Pixies, The Replacements, Peter Gabriel and Coil.

The Submarines next week will release ‘The Shoelaces EP,’ a six-track collection featuring covers of songs by a pair of the band’s influences: The Jesus and Mary Chain’s ‘Just Like Honey,’ already released as a bonus track on 2011’s ‘Love Notes/Letter Bombs,’ and New Order’s ‘Your Silent Face.’

If you’ve haven’t seen director Tim Irwin’s 2005 documentary ‘We Jam Econo: The Story of the Minutemen,’ now’s your chance — the full 90-minute film has made its way onto YouTube. The film features interviews with surviving members Mike Watt and George Hurley.

Sunday Best Recordings, the label that put out The Cure’s just-released ‘Bestival Live 2011’ double-disc live album in the U.K., has posted a pair of broadcast-quality clips of Robert Smith and Co.’s performance at the U.K. festival last September to promote the new release.

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.

Sinead O’Connor today announced she will release ‘How About I Be Me (And You Be You)?’ — her ninth studio album and first in five years — in February, and has offered fans a taste by streaming two of the record’s tracks in advance of the release.

This week’s new releases include ‘Please Please Please: A Tribute to The Smiths,’ The Lucy Show’s rarities comp ‘Remembrances,’ a DVD and Blu-ray reissue of X’s ‘The Unheard Music,’ a 5LP Gary Numan vinyl box set and a new 2CD best-of from The Lemonheads.