Radie Peat is about to release her first solo album and it is a masterpiece of reinvigoration and reinterpretation that also highlights generational trauma through a modern lens.
I sat down with Radie Peat, revered and influential vocalist of Lankum and ØXN fame to discuss her debut solo album ‘No Human Tongue Can Tell’ out November 13th, 2026. Peat is celebrated for her emotional, powerful voice. Her vocal authority is gripping and asks of you to hold onto every word. A true talent for breathing life into old songs and carrying them forward with new meaning. Every story transformed as it flicks from her tongue, like the hot flame of a struck match.
The album begins with ‘Hares on the Mountain’, a re-telling of the classic folk song. In my opinion, when alchemised through Peat’s voice the song becomes a powerful story of power in a woman’s hands. Would she turn to cruelty and thoughtlessness if she instead was in a position of power?
There’s a prevalent conversation about women’s safety in recent times, perhaps a new wave of feminism being stoked in. Energy rooted in generational trauma, a bubble ready to burst. This anterior track could be taken as commentary on this; we discuss.
“I think that’s a pretty interesting way of reading it. You could take it straight up as a courtship song but it’s got a hint of violence as soon as you start using the imagery of the hunting and the guns and that. Even though there’s imagery of the animal world, it’s all very natural, natural cycles in life, it does introduce the idea of violence, and kind of violence in courtship. — The female has all the power in the song, probably why it’s so appealing to sing, you know. It’s a subtle song though it doesn’t really spell anything out, so I find it interesting to hear what other people think of it. But I like your reading of it.”
I can’t give enough praise for this album, when taken as a whole the anthology has a strong female protagonist vein running through it. Peat is sonically powerful throughout.
“I find it really impressive hearing other women’s views on the body of work together. Like people are really picking up on that. It wasn’t meant to be a mission statement, but it is just part of the album, what the album is, is part of who I am.”
“I have a natural inclination when I collect folk songs to be drawn towards ones that have a stronger female protagonist. Women in songs with more agency where they’re not objects, lost, or you know, victims of a crime of betrayal or whatever.”
‘The Moon and Stars’ is the second track off the album, another powerful ballad with weighty lyrics, eerie use of violins aid to a hypnotic synth and a sound that fills the room.
“So yeah, women with their own agency, I made some of them more that way, like ‘The Moon and Star’. Changed it around to make her angrier, give her more bite. You know because I thought that the traditional song is a bit more passive, and it’s like a narrated position. It’s not a first person narrative. There’s also no lines about like I wish I had never seen your face or whatever. So again, I wanted to give her a little bit more bite.”
‘Luisne’ is the 4th track on the album. The title means ‘the first blush of light before dawn. I asked Peat if this album represents a rebirth at all for her? A sort of darkness into light, from the womb out into the world.
“Yeah, maybe it would be a birth of some kind. Yeah, Rebirth. I can’t help but think about how I was pregnant when I started recording and then during the process I had a baby, became a mother. Then slowly kind of came back to doing music and then finished it. So my identity changed very much in the course of recording this.”
“It was also a kind of birth into a different way of doing music as well. It’s different to how I’ve done it before because I wasn’t collaborating. All my other stuff is very collaborative you know, whereas this was kind of on my own, which was a massive challenge for me. It was really rewarding, but it was really hard as well, I feel like I learned a lot doing it. I came to the other side with more knowledge about myself and music. Everything in my life changed so much and there’s been loads of different versions of myself kind of documented over that time. All different types of vocal delivery and all kinds of emotions. There’s loads of different personal experiences in there too.”
It really is quite the anthology. I asked Peat about her process and how long it was in the works. This kind of grace doesn’t happen on a whim.
“The thought of it was in the works for a good few years. I had the practical idea of roughly the instrumentation and how I would like to do it about eight, nine, maybe ten years ago. But I only started tracking it five years ago. It didn’t take the full five years, you know what I mean? I had a baby in the middle and then the producer, John Murphy, had a baby as well, so we kept coming away and coming back to it.”
There’s a lot to be unearthed of the self when creating something as an artist. It ultimately becomes a fresh new thing in the hands of the audience, creating a never-ending domino effect of creation.
“Why it took so long as well is how I recorded it. I wanted to do multiple layers of myself on top of myself, which means you do your first pass, with an instrument and a voice, whatever. You have to come away and write all the other parts, come back and track them, go away, write more parts, come back, track them, you know. For me it was a really interesting limitation and a challenge because you’re sort of trapped in your own brain. You see your strengths, weaknesses and blind-spots. You get to see if you’re really into this, or like geez… you’re really bad at that.”
There’s deep shadow work associated with being a creative of any kind if you’re willing to look just under the surface. Whether you find this enlightening or not is really up to you. Peat and I share the same sentiment; there’s real growth in the uncomfortable.
“You can look into these parts of yourself that maybe you don’t realise are hidden away. Another thing about when you do something and then come back to it, it actually feels like you’re interacting with another person. It’s just a different version of yourself. There were multiple times during this album where I came back to it and it felt like I was playing music with other people, even though it was just me in the past.”
‘No Human Tongue Can Tell’ is a collection of songs to reassure us that others have been where we are. With a unique vision, staggering vocal range and innate intelligence Radie Peat delivers a reflective tribute to love stories. One woman’s voice represents the voices of many through the ages, or as Peat describes it, “communicating hundreds of years of other people’s experiences, that have been absorbed from generations and generations before you – binds you with a worldliness beyond the sum of your own experience.”
Words – Lauren Lawlor
No Human Tongue Can Tell is released via Rough Trade Records on Nov 13th on Vinyl, CD and Digital. Radie plays Vicar St on November 20th.
