Though it’s been a while since the LP that “Another Night Out” was featured on came out, that didn’t stop UK production duo UNKLE from putting out a dramatic black-and-white clip almost two years after the fact. While it’s a bit odd for UNKLE’s interests, the release is actually timed rather nicely for its featured artist, recent Album Of The Week recipient Mark Lanegan, so maybe that’s why it’s finally dropping (disclaimer: this is mere speculation). Watch the Toby Dye-directed clip, which features a boxing narrative, below.

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A year and a half ago, I had a perfectly lovely telephone conversation with Isobel Campbell, the former Belle & Sebastian member who has recorded three ultra-satisfying albums of Nancy Sinatra pastiche with Mark Lanegan. And during that conversation, I learned something about Lanegan that seems to throw this entire career into stark relief: He is a massive fan of the Los Angeles Clippers. More specifically, he is someone who will fly on three separate planes to get to a Clippers game. And given that the Clippers have historically been one of the great lost causes of professional sports, Lanegan’s weatherbeaten voice and hard-luck laments make a whole lot more sense; I can just picture the man intoning his scorched-earth rumbles into a studio mic while ruminating on that time the Clips had the number-one overall draft pick and ended up with Michael Olowokandi. But all of a sudden this year, the Clippers matter. They’ve got Chris Paul and Blake Griffin and arguably the most exciting young team in the NBA, and they’re beating the Lakers. And now Lanegan has released his most unburdened album in many, many years. This cannot be a coincidence.

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Name: Mark Lanegan
Progress Report: The songwriter talks about Blues Funeral, his first solo album in nearly 8 years.

It should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with his music that Mark Lanegan is a man of relatively few words. Whether it be with his work as the frontman of Screaming Trees, his work with the Twilight Singers and Queens of the Stone Age, his duet albums with Isobel Campbell, or his arresting solo work, Lanegan brings a certain intensity and creative gravitas to anything he happens to be involved with. This month he will release Blues Funeral, his first solo outing since 2004’s Bubblegum. Not surprisingly, the record is perfectly produced and an expectedly heavy listening experience (his growly voice has never sounded better). Perhaps more surprisingly, speaking to Mark Lanegan is a refreshingly un-heavy experience.

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The former Screaming Trees frontman and great whiskey-dipped American growler Mark Lanegan will release the new solo album Blues Funeral early next year, and the lead single and opening track “The Gravedigger’s Song” is a pounding, apocalyptic thousand-yard-stare rumble; it’s just the sort of mythic koan he does so well. Listen below.

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Aggronautix, the same company behind the slash nonfiction comix book Henry & Glenn Forever (depicting a loving spousal relationship between Henry Rollins and Glenn Danzig), has a series of musician bobbleheads (or “Throbbleheads”) that they add to every year. This year their offerings include new editions of the G. G. Allin and Wendy O. Williams bobbleheads, as well as new Black Flag/OFF! frontman Keith Morris, and Roky Erickson. Mark Lanegan’s bobblehead, which includes his distinctive star tattoos, is available on his website. Not shown on his bobblehead: his other 50 tattoos. Check out the Roky Erickson and Mark Lanegan editions below:

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The Belle & Sebastian-curated ATP Bowlie 2 took place earlier this week (December 10-12) at Butlins Holiday Centre, Minehead. (In 1999 B&S curated The Bowlie Weekender, which ultimately became All Tomorrow’s Parties, hence the “2″.) The event featured 40 bands picked by the Scottish pop ensemble and, according to photographer Elena Morelli, a bunch of seagulls. She also told us Alice Glass walked to the stage with the assistance of crutches (that she didn’t need), the curators invited various audience members onstage with them to dance (later giving the participants commemorative medals), that the “secret act” was Franz Ferdinand, and that (ergo) one of the festival’s highlights was Edwyn Collins’ Teenage Fanclub, Alex Kapranos, and Cribs-featuring set. Kapranos helped Collins with “Do It Again” (along with Nick McCarthy) and “A Girl Like You.” Off-stage, the Vaselines’ Frances McKee led a yoga class, Stuart Murdoch did a reading, and I guess people dodged seagull shit. Take a look at Elena’s photos and pretend you were there.

Hey, what are members of the Velvet Underground up to? Lots, apparently:

John Cale played all of his 1973 album, Paris 1919 at UCLA’s Royce Hall with his band and the UCLA Philharmonia last Thursday. After an intermission, Cale returned to play a mix of his own songs and re-interpreted covers with special guests Ben Gibbard and Mark Lanegan.

Lou Reed will join Gorillaz onstage when they play Madison Square Garden on 10/8. Reed did “Some Kind Of Nature” with the band at Glastonbury Festival, so this’ll be his second appearance with the band, and his only one this tour. Mos Def, Little Dragon, De La Soul, Bobby Womack, and Miho Hatori will appear at the MSG show and a few more.

Finally, if you watch the news on WALB, the local NBC affiliate for southwestern Georgia, you might’ve caught an interview with Tea Partier Maureen Tucker, who tells the camera that she’s tired of how the country is being led toward socialism. (The broadcast is a few months old, but has been making the rounds only recently.) Maureen Tucker is better known as Moe Tucker, the drummer for the Velvet Underground, who moved to Georgia to raise her family. She joins the small list of right-leaning musicians like Sammy Hagar, Alice Cooper, Ted Nugent, Meatloaf, and Kid Rock. Watch her interview on WALB (starts at 2:40):

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Guns, seedy motels, and the Southwest are prominent in this video for “You Won’t Let Me Down Again” from Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan’s new album Hawk.

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Lanegan does a properly slow, soulful, kind of blue take of one of his Gutter Twin’s classic Congregation songs “Tonight.” His go at the 1992 come-on’s from the forthcoming Summer’s Kiss: A Tribute To The Afghan Whigs, which includes a baker’s dozen of Whigs takes via Joseph Arthur, My Jerusalem, Zykos, etc. The idea for it started in the summer of 2006 when the Afghan Whigs fan site Summerkiss put out an open call for covers of Whigs songs and folks responded. You can hear snippets of the selected 13 (of nearly 100 submitted) at the Summerkiss label’s website, but first you can hear Lanegan in his smokey entirety here. (By the by, does Sam Holden’s photo for the tribute’s cover look at all familiar, gentlemen?)

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After 14 years spent otherwise, UK DJ Tim Simenon revived his ’80s-rooted project Bomb The Bass with the Future Chaos LP. The collection’s benefited from sexy and smiley videos, and a good crew of collaborators including Fujiya & Miyagi, Paul Conboy, Jon Spencer, and here, fellow fortysomething Mark Lanegan. “Black River” sits the ex-Screaming Tree/Gutter Twin/sometime-Twilight Singer’s singular baritone inside a tune that’s spooky through the verse, hopeful and relieved of its blackness in the hook. It’s the sorta shit that Lanegan does well. Video director Corin Hardy creates a short story around these mood points: opening with a creepy masked dude dragging a body through the woods, taking a left turn when the black river meets the sun.

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