Contrary to the album’s title, the very first sound you hear on Radie Peat’s debut solo studio album, No Human Tongue Can Tell, is the voice of the singer herself. And it is a voice that, over the last decade, has told many a story. As the most beguiling and intriguing vocalist of Irish folk revivalists Lankum, Peat has firmly established herself as not only the premier folk vocalist of her generation, but as truly a voice for the ages.
No Human Tongue Can Tell opens with a rendition of the English folk song ‘Hares on the Mountain’, most famously performed by Shirley Collins, accompanied by Davy Graham on guitar. Peat’s interpretation remains fairly faithful to Collins', albeit delivered with a distinct sense of gloom. Its lyric, in which a woman rejects male advances in favour of autonomy, makes for a subtle yet telling introduction to the album, establishing a prominent feminist current that runs throughout.
Following the plaintive introduction of ‘Hares on the Mountain’ comes the magical, musically marauding heartbreak of ‘The Moon and Stars’, which lyrically plumbs devastatingly dark depths of female struggle. Musically, the track is a revelation and a collision, as acoustic instruments of the folk tradition are expertly interwoven with synthesised electronic elements, culminating in a patchwork of cosmic-trad. A space-folk epic that feels utterly unique. Later, listeners are treated to the stunningly haunting performance of the traditional tune ‘Still I Love Him’, whose deathly dark atmosphere and stark, doom-folk instrumentation perfectly match the harrowing tale of a woman bound to her abusive partner.
Another immediate highlight is Peat’s transformation of Irish folk singer Liam Weldon’s title track from his 1976 album Dark Horse on the Wind. Weldon’s unaccompanied original, which laments the political betrayals of Irish independence, is reimagined by Peat as a searing, drone-dominant keening, its intensely spiritual quality producing a devastatingly beautiful effect.
No Human Tongue Can Tell is an album that draws deep from the well of female-centred music, connecting disparate strands of a rich musical lineage: from the pioneering, mythic folk of Anne Briggs and Shirley Collins to the countryfied Southern Gothic of Karen Dalton and Gillian Welch, from the brooding, haunting avant-garde melancholy of Nico to the spellbound gothic-rock of Siouxsie and the Banshees and Cocteau Twins, and even the cosmic, progressive-folk explorations of Catherine Ribeiro + Alpes.
As a whole, the album is an intimate and intense experience, one in which a history of women's pain and oppression is as vivid and palpable in the words as it is in Peat’s heart-wrenching voice. A brilliant solo debut, one that is not an easy listen, but nor is it meant to be.
No Human Tongue Can Tell is out now on Arctic Pearl LP, Black LP & CD.
