Tom Waits has served as an artistic muse for everyone from Jim Jarmusch to Scarlett Johansson, and now photographer/director Anton Corbijn will publish a book featuring over thirty years of portraits of the gravel-voiced troubadour. The 160-page hardcover entitled Waits/Corbijn, will include 75 color and dutone plates as well as lyrics from major Waits albums, and is set for release through Schirmer/Mosel this fall. In case you can’t get enough of these two after this book, keep your eyes peeled for a Tom Waits appearance as the Devil in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, and Corbijn’s follow-up to Control with his second full-length film, A Very Private Gentleman. (via TwentyFourBit)

Nick Cave, Australian Renaissance man most famous for his excellent band Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds (Edit: The Birthday Party?), is all set to release his second novel, entitled The Death of Bunny Munro. The official press release describes the book as follows:

Bunny Munro sells beauty products and the dream of hope to the lonely housewives of the south coast of England. Set adrift by his wife’s suicide and struggling to keep a grip on reality, Bunny does the only thing he can think of: he hits the road, with his nine-year-old son in tow. As their bizarre and increasingly frenzied road trip shears into a final reckoning, Bunny finds that the revenants of his world – decrepit fathers, vengeful ghosts, jealous husbands and horned psycho-killers – have emerged from the shadows and are seeking to exact their toll.

His tale of an Avon man gone wrong will be available to the masses on September 8 through Faber & Faber, Inc., and Penguin will release a new edition of his first and only other novel And the Ass Saw the Angel, originally published in 1989. In other Nick Cave news, he and fellow Bad Seed Warren Ellis have composed the soundtrack for the film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s classic novel The Road, set for release later this year.

Rumors have been confirmed regarding a Bob Dylan Christmas album to come out in time for this December 25th. The songs “Must Be Santa,” “Here Comes Santa Claus,” “I’ll Be Home For Christmas” and “O Little Town of Bethlehem” have already been recorded at Jackson Browne’s recording studio in Santa Monica, CA. Though Zimmy is no longer in his born-again Christian phase, he apparently remains detached enough from his Jewish heritage to dedicate an album to baby Jesus. He’s not alone in the practice, as one of pop music’s best Christmas albums ever, A Christmas Gift For You, was recorded by fellow Jew and recent jail bait Phil Spector. However, aside from that one, the standards remain pretty damn low in the Christmas album world. (via Billboard)

Interpol’s Paul Banks has debuted the video for his single “Games For Days” under his solo moniker , Julian Plenti. The film noir-ish video, directed by Javier Aguilera, features a cameo by Metric’s Emily Haines as a femme fatale, while Banks plays good and evil versions of himself. It also includes sultry cigarette smoking and… handcuffs. See for yourself above. Also, you’ll be able to listen to the song plenti (har har) on The Tripwire’s most recent podcast. (via Stereogum)

Bruce Foxton, former bassist of legendary English mod punk band The Jam, has decided to make peace with the band’s singer Paul Weller. After Weller left the band in 1982, Foxton started the ‘reunion’ band From the Jam, performing original Jam songs with a Weller imitator, Russell Hastings, in order to keep the dream alive. Needless to say the Modfather was peeved. After all these years, the two are finally on speaking terms again, but on an original Jam reunion, Foxton says, “I don’t even discuss it with him, I know the answer.” However, he claims a new Hastings-written From the Jam album is a possibility: “If we think we’ve got enough good songs we will put out an album,” he said. “We will push on. I don’t know how quickly it will be but we’ve been going into a little studio and trying. Sometimes nothing comes of it and you think ‘I’ll just go off and play a round of golf again’. We will see how it goes.” And so, the timeless debate continues: which is more important, music or golf? (via NME)