The jaw-drooping lineup of May’s Cruel World festival was unveiled this week, and we’re thrilled to announce we’ve got a pair of tickets to give away.

The Cruel World festival will return to Southern California in 2023, promoters announced today, with a lineup that includes Siouxsie, Love and Rockets and more.

The pandemic-canceled Cruel World festival will not only come roaring back in 2022, but promoters today announced a second date featuring the same classic-alternative bill, topped by headliners Morrissey, Bauhaus, Blondie and Devo. Full details and ticket information right here.

The pandemic-canceled Cruel World festival will rise again in 2022 at a different location in the Los Angeles area but with most of the original lineup — including headliners Morrissey, Bauhaus, Blondie and Devo — intact, promoters announced Monday.  Get your full details including ticket info right here.

The pandemic-canceled Cruel World festival — a celebration of the ’80s alternative era with a huge bill topped by Morrissey, Bauhaus, Blondie and Devo — on Saturday teased a spring 2022 return, though it’s not known whether the original 2020 lineup will be intact. Check out full details right here.

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.

Echo & The Bunnymen guitarist Will Sergeant has enlisted former bandmate and current Wild Swans bassist Les Pattinson to take part in a new instrumental band called Poltergeist that he says falls ‘somewhere between krautrock and prog rock,’ and which already is rehearing in Liverpool in advance of recording a four-track EP.

Echo & The Bunnymen guitarist Will Sergeant will bring his art to Los Angeles later this spring for his first major U.S. exhibition, a show called ‘My Own Worst Enemy’ featuring abstracts, collages, screenprints and minimalist pieces that will from May 18 through June 16 at Substrate Contemporary Fine Art.

Next week, Liverpool’s The Wild Swans — the brainchild of former Teardrop Explodes keyboardist Paul Simpson — will release their first album in 21 years and only their third overall, a 13-track collection called ‘The Coldest Winter For a Hundred Years’ that features veterans of Echo & The Bunnymen, Spiritualized and The Brian Jonestown Massacre.

Fans of Echo & The Bunnymen can commemorate the band’s recent gigs performing their first two albums — 1980’s ‘Crocodiles’ and 1981’s ‘Heaven Up Here’ — back-to-back with a brand-new live CD called ‘Do It Clean.’

After performing 1980’s ‘Crocodiles’ and 1981’s ‘Heaven Up Here’ on tour in the U.S. this coming May, Echo & The Bunnymen will skip ahead two albums this fall, spending the end of September on the road in the U.K playing the band’s classic fourth album ‘Ocean Rain’ at six new concerts.

On May 26, 1984 — just three months after the release of ‘The Smiths’ — a young and occasionally smiling Morrissey appeared on the BBC TV game show ‘Pop Quiz,’ which pitted two teams of musicians against each other in a battle of musical knowledge hosted by a ridiculously attired DJ named Mike Read.

A crisp studio recording of The Ocean’s Blue’s ‘City Traffic,’ a never-before-released concert favorite by the late-’80s/early-’90s jangle-pop outfit, surfaced on YouTube this summer accompanied by a homemade music video.