THE last time Imelda May played York Barbican, in November 2011, all Mayhem broke out as the pocket dynamo Dubliner with the big, big voice rode a crest of a surf guitar pop wave with her blues brio and kitsch rockabilly hair curl.

When she returns on May 16, York will see a very different Imelda, the punky rockabilly queen gone west, the new album cover shot in black and white with May in more of a Chrissie Hynde look, but it all goes much deeper than skin deep, so much so that "makeover" would be too shallow a description.

Life. Love. Flesh. Blood is Imelda May's post-break up album following her 2015 split from husband and musical collaborator Darrel Higham after 18 years, and life, love, flesh and blood is all here.

Emotions are raw, and experienced hand T Bone Burnett adroitly allows the hurt to breathe, the spit as important as the polish in his production booth, and you won't have heard a record sung so painfully soulfully, with such erotic power and yet aching tenderness and honesty, since Cat Power's The Greatest in 2006.

Recorded over seven days in Los Angeles with the band who made Robert Plant and Alison Krauss's Raising Sands, the immediate talking point of May's open-hearted fifth album is the single Black Tears, written with Angelo Petragalia "after a heart wrenchingly difficult goodbye" as she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror with black tears rolling down her face. It's an instant country blues classic, a lithe ballad made all the more potent by Jeff Beck's slide guitar.

May glides between blues, rock, soul, gospel and jazz with equal aplomb on an ultimately redemptive record that served as "therapy, like keeping a diary that a lot of people read", and at 42 her voice is a wondrous example of how to avoid histrionics, eschew frills and go straight for the heartbreak.

Imelda May plays York Barbican on May 16. Box office: 0844 854 2757 or at yorkbarbican.co.uk