Steve Earle’s lanky boy’s fourth album. It’s a bluecountry gospel-rockabilly grunge record with soul inflections (well, horns).

Ahead of her slot at this weekend's Womad festival – and two years after her blistering breakthrough – Irish siren Imelda May talks to Fiona Sturges about the rocky road to success

Like rockabilly and rocksteady, the generic sound of Congolese rumba is strong enough to support almost any song.

Swiss singer-songwriter Hank Shizzoe puts his native multi-lingualism to good use on Breather, with covers of Italian Adriano Celentano's prescient 1976 commentary on economics, "Svalutation", and "Et Moi, Et Moi, Et Moi" by Sixties' French Dylan wannabe Jacques Dutronc, the monotone diatribe of which is perfectly suited to Shizzoe's deadpan delivery.

Jonathan Fischer, the esteemed archivist responsible for Trikont's exemplary compilations of "black radical music", may be stretching a point by describing the 26 choice cuts of 1950s R&B collected here as "early black rock'n'roll" – although in his defence one has to admit that the obverse, considering the likes of Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis as "late white R&B", would not be that far from the truth, either.

Dark star of the plaid brigade

You probably know already whether you're going to be moved by this, the final instalment of Rick Rubin's recordings of the most sentimentalised cultural figure of the past decade.

Selected pubs offer chance to get new perspective on action at the Emirates

In terms of popular culture, many commentators start the Swinging Sixties with the Beatles in 1963, but the Sixties started swinging in January 1960 itself with the UK's first rock'n'roll package tour featuring the American stars, Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent. Judging by reports in regional newspapers by inappropriate theatre reviewers, the tour was a Grade A disaster, but of course it wasn't. The audiences loved the shows and more importantly, fledgling British musicians watched closely and determined that this was the way forward. Considering there are now films about relatively unimportant moments in rock history, it is inexplicable that there has not been a film about Cochran and Vincent, especially when the story is so colourful.

As a new film reminds us, he was a polio survivor from the suburbs and not much of a musician.

It's appropriate that this definitive six-CD compilation of Buddy Holly's output is packaged in imitation of a High School Yearbook, since Buddy was, at the time of his death in 1959, The Boy Most Likely to Change the Face of Music.

Setzer is the Jedwardhairedsinger-guitarist whonot only spearheaded therockabilly revival of theearly 1980s with the StrayCats but also had a majorhand in the big-band jivemovement of the late1990s with his GrammywinningTheDirty Boogie.Nowadays, Setzer switchesbetween Rat Pack croonerand rockabilly rebel, oftenin the space of one line.Simultaneously smoothand raw, one minute it'screpe-soled jitterbug, thenext it's Vegas razzledazzle,and beneath thehorn section's glitzy blarethere always beats abadass heart.

The record producer and label owner Shelby Singleton is associated with several American hits of the 1960s but he will be best remembered for his re-marketing of the Sun Records catalogue in Memphis. He admitted that he had no great musical talent, but he knew what record buyers wanted to hear.

Obvious differences of scale prevent this alliance of American indie luminaries