Album

Way before Emmylou Harris or even Patsy Cline, women were singing country songs to make your heart crack. Among these 25 examples from pre-WW2, only the Carter Family and Patsy Montana will be familiar to most. But just as thrilling are the Coon Creek Girls, a kind of 1930s version of the Be Good Tanyas, and Gertrude Gossett, who sounds like an early Gillian Welch. Every track is a discovery, and you wonder how the Louisiana Lou, The Girls Of The Golden West and Moonshine Kate ever lapsed into obscurity. Sleevenotes are courtesy of The Handsome Family's Rennie Sparks.

Latest volume of 20 full-length 12-inch classics from '70s and '80s

Slung-together bargain-priced selection

Fundraiser featuring Public Enemy, Ms Dynamite and a reformed Crass

No Captain, but a Beefheartless supergroup assembled from various Magic line-ups

Debut album from London-based 24-year-old

First album in four years from survivors of star-crossed Southern rock behemoth

The Pastels always seem to find their wheelbarrow positively overflowing with acclaim, though some of us have struggled for over a decade to remember what they actually sound like. Here they wibble along, inoffensively enough, through a 25-minute accompaniment to the recent Brit road movie directed by David Mackenzie. It climaxes, if that's not too bold a word (it is), with a Jarvis Cocker collaboration, "I Picked A Flower", a parody of a pop hit which demonstrates that Cocker used up all his parody power a while ago.

Double CD featuring Velvet Underground chanteuse's solo comeback material from early '80s

New compilation in surround sound, plus unreleased Johnny Cash duet