Album Of The Week: Mark Lanegan Band Blues Funeral

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.