If 1987′s Document heralded the moment when R.E.M. started to get away from us, the follow up Green confirmed things: This wasn’t going to be our little secret anymore.

You could be forgiven for not believing that a new project based on the work of Irish poet William Butler Yeats might be the rocking-est, modern-est thing the Waterboys have put out in some 25 years. But it is.

With Depeche Mode’s forthcoming Delta Machine, David Gahan, Andy Fletcher and Martin Gore recall their greatest late-1980s successes. That they are largely no worse for the wear, in particular Gahan, is a wonder to behold.

A hired gun and a second fiddle for almost his entire career thus far, Johnny Marr finally slips into the driver’s seat with The Messenger. His debut solo record is his own creation from top to bottom, a propulsive and diverse recording top-loaded with raucous accoutrements and immense souvenirs. NME’s “Godlike Genius” dealt magic in the Smiths and co-wrote songs [...]

Anyone who was a fan of their dangerously debauched brand of college rock, so long gone now, would have thought that chances of the Replacements getting back together were roughly the same as the odds they’d cover a Gordon Lightfoot song.

Dimly foreboding, funereal in the most intriguing of ways, Depeche Mode’s new single “Heaven” moves with a delicious deliberateness. It’s all atmosphere, all feel, completely enveloping.

Check out an exclusive advance stream of “Anyway,” from Chris Stamey’s upcoming album Lovesick Blues, due on February 5, 2013 from Yep Roc Records.

All you need to know, really, about Irish punk rockers Pogues is right in their name, taken from a Gaelic phrase meaning “kiss my arse.” Confounding expectation, they played softly as often as they played loudly

There is a majestic weirdness to Camper Van Beethoven, recaptured in all of its freak-flag glory on La Costa Perdida, their first studio effort in some eight years.

If you grew up a fan of live music in or around Louisiana in the late 1980s or early 1990s, you knew, without a doubt, that Dash Rip Rock was going to be huge one day.