Radie Peat - No Human Tongue Can Tell

Radie Peat - No Human Tongue Can Tell is the debut solo album from the Irish singer known for her work with Lankum and ØXN. Released by Rough Trade Records, the album places Peat’s remarkable contralto voice at the centre of a collection rooted in folk tradition while approaching those songs with a distinctly contemporary sense of agency. Her singing combines technical authority with emotional weight, treating traditional material not as something fixed in the past but as living testimony that can be questioned, altered and carried forward.

That approach is especially clear on The Moon and Stars. Peat reshapes parts of the lyric to make its anger and defiance more explicit, drawing attention to coded references to unwanted pregnancy, abortion and rue, a herb historically associated with inducing miscarriage. Her interpretation focuses the song on the woman’s experience of betrayal, constraint and desperation. Peat has also connected the performance to the final scene of John B. Keane’s 1959 play Sive, using that emotional intensity to heighten the song’s sense of refusal.

Across No Human Tongue Can Tell, Peat applies that same combination of scholarship, instinct and personal perspective to love songs and narratives inherited through generations. The album is reflective without becoming nostalgic: old songs are allowed to retain the accumulated experience of the people who have sung them before, while Peat’s retellings emphasise confidence, autonomy and the continuing relevance of their emotional worlds. In her hands, folk music becomes a way for one voice to carry the experiences of many.

The album contains nine tracks, including Hares on The Mountain, Willow Garden, Luisne, Dark Horse on The Wind and Cailín Deas. Two 2LP editions are available: an Indie Exclusive Pearl Arctic Vinyl pressing and a standard black-vinyl edition.