The Lankum and ØXN vocalist’s first solo record is out November 13th via Rough Trade, with a Dublin show at Vicar Street on Friday November 20th.
Radie Peat has announced her debut solo album, No Human Tongue Can Tell, out Friday November 13th via Rough Trade Records, alongside new single ‘The Moon and Stars’. She plays Vicar Street, Dublin on Friday November 20th.
The album gathers a collection of folk songs largely centred on female struggle, suffering, strength and endurance, alongside songs of love in all its complications, drawing on Peat’s powerful contralto voice and technical command as an interpreter of the folk tradition.
As she puts it, singing these songs means “communicating hundreds of years of other people’s experiences… binds you with a worldliness beyond the sum of your own experience.”
‘The Moon and Stars’ finds Peat inhabiting the song’s anger directly, altering its lyrics to sing “I wish I’d never seen your face or heard your lying tongue.” She’s built in coded references to unwanted pregnancy and abortion, including mentions of rue, a herb historically used to induce miscarriage, wanting to represent that experience from the woman’s own perspective.
♡ Nialler9 is independent and reader-supported. Support us on Patreon →
The song’s sense of desperation also draws on the final scene of John B. Keane’s 1959 play Sive, where the title character drowns herself in a bog hole rather than accept an arranged marriage, a sentiment Peat folds into her own reworking: “Never… if the sun, moon and stars rained down out of the heavens and split the ground under my feet… never!”
Peat says the idea for the album goes back roughly 15 years, sparked by a documentary on Mike Oldfield making Tubular Bells. “The idea just stuck that I would like to try record like that, where you write and play all the intersecting parts,” she said, drawn to the appeal of being limited by her own mind and abilities as a way of making something definitively unique.
Musically she points to Shirley and Dolly Collins, Enya, Lal Waterson, Katie Kim, Jackson C. Frank, Karen Dalton, Nellie Weldon and Liam Weldon as reference points, and credited producer John “Spud” Murphy for making the record possible.
No Human Tongue Can Tell tracklist:
- Hares on the Mountain
- The Moon and Stars
- Willow Garden
- Luisne
- Same Old Man
- Dark Horse on the Wind
- Still I Love Him
- Bonnie Boy
- Cailín Deas
Live dates:
- Tuesday November 3rd – Union Chapel, London, UK (sold out)
- Friday November 20th – Vicar Street, Dublin, IE
- Sunday January 31st, 2027 – Paradiso, Amsterdam, NL
- Monday February 1st, 2027 – La Trabendo, Paris, FR
- Wednesday May 19th, 2027 – The Barbican, London, UK
No Human Tongue Can Tell is available to pre-order now.
Niall Byrne is the founder of the most-influential Irish music site Nialler9, where he has been writing about music since 2005. He is the co-host of the Nialler9 Podcast and has written for the Irish Times, Irish Independent, Sunday Times, Totally Dublin, Cara Magazine, Red Bull and more. Niall is a DJ, co-founder of Lumo Club, event curator, Indie Sleaze club promoter, and producer of gigs and monthly listening parties & events in Dublin.
