Mark Lanegan has shared a new video for the track, ‘Emperor’. Taken from the singer’s current album, the really rather brilliant Gargoyle, the track finds Lanegan in an uncharacteristically upbeat mood – but it has to be said that the video is anything but.

Even though the song sounds like it could’ve been written with The Dandy Warhols while trying to cover Iggy Pop’s ‘The Passenger’, it’s pretty grim fare, if truth be told. Following what appears to be an assassination attempt on a dictator, the protagonist makes his getaway before encountering a troop of soldiers who then burst into a brilliantly camp dance sequence. And that’s before a violent stabbing and a whole load of blood.

But what can it all mean?

Says the video’s director Joshua Lipworth: “The story is based on the desperate final hours of a dictator ousted by his own people and loosely based on the fall of Ceausescu, the Romanian dictator.

“Firmly in denial of his desperate circumstance, he marches steadfastly towards his tragic demise. His grip on reality faltering with every step. The video was shot in 16mm on location in Estonia. Predominantly in the suburbs of Tallin and the deserted underwater soviet prison camp of Rummu.”

The track tops off what’s been a cracking year for the former Screaming Trees frontman. Gargoyle, his tenth solo album, has been his most successful to date and his live dates, including a stellar performance at this year’s Glastonbury festival, have found him in probably the best form of his long career.

He returns to the UK for five live dates in December including gigs in Leeds, Brighton and London. He plays:

DECEMBER

08 – Leeds, Church
09 – Oxford, O2 Academy
10 – Southampton, Engine Rooms
11 – Brighton, Concorde 2
12 – London, Koko