Double LP
The debut solo album by one of Ireland’s most influential and revered vocalists, Lankum and ØXN’s Radie Peat. With unique vision, staggering vocal range and a wry sense of knowing, Peat is celebrated for her powerful contralto voice, technical vocal authority, and emotional depth. She distils the essence of folk music, breathing life into old songs and carrying them forward with new meaning, both sustaining and enriching the Irish singing tradition.
Peat’s voice is resolute on ‘The Moon and Stars’ as she inhabits the song’s expressions of anger. She has also altered the lyrics in parts to be more defiant, ‘I wish I’d never seen your face or heard your lying tongue’, Peat utilises the energy of indignation in embodying her protagonist who endures ultimate betrayal and abandonment in her time of need. “There are coded references to unwanted pregnancies and abortions within the song”, Peat explains, “as well as references to rue, a herb which was used to cause miscarriage, I wanted to represent these experiences from the woman’s perspective – to connect us with her experience”. Peat conveys the sense of desperation and constraint. “When I wrote the lines that refer to screeching and roaring, I was recalling the final scene of John B. Keane’s 1959 play, Sive”. Upon learning of her arranged marriage, Sive flees into the night and drowns herself in a bog hole. Peat has incorporated the sentiment of this scene, “Never... if the sun, moon and stars rained down out of the heavens and split the ground under my feet... never!” into her reworking of the song to heighten the sense of fury and desperation.
No Human Tongue Can Tell is both deeply personal and expansively universal. Reflective, yet pragmatic. Through this collection of folk songs Radie leads with confidence, self-sufficiency and autonomy in her retelling of love stories from the folk tradition. Creating a moment where 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 into the songs from generations and generations before you – binds you with a worldliness beyond the sum of your own experience’. In this respect, the album has both an ancient and contemporary feel. Imbued with sagely advice, catharsis for profound suffering and levity in the midst of desperation, No Human Tongue Can Tell is a collection of songs to reassure us that others have been where we are.
