Radie Peat Announces Debut Solo Album No Human Tongue Can Tell

The Lankum and ØXN musician shares ‘The Moon and Stars’ ahead of her first solo album, with live dates announced through to May 2027.

Radie Peat has announced her debut solo album, No Human Tongue Can Tell, due out on 13 November via Rough Trade Records. Alongside the announcement, the Lankum and ØXN member has released ‘The Moon and Stars’, one of nine folk songs on a record that explores women’s experiences of love, suffering and endurance. The album is available to pre-order here.

The idea for the record has been with Peat for around 15 years, beginning with a documentary about the making of Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells. Watching Oldfield’s approach prompted her to consider what she might make by writing and playing the intersecting parts herself, allowing her own preferences and limitations to determine the arrangements. ‘I found the idea of being limited by your own mind and abilities, with all the blind spots and personal preferences, very appealing, and I felt it would make something definitively unique, for better or for worse,’ she explains. Made with John ‘Spud’ Murphy, the album draws on influences including Shirley and Dolly Collins, Enya, Lal Waterson, Katie Kim, Jackson C. Frank, Karen Dalton, Nellie Weldon and Liam Weldon.

Peat says the connections between her chosen songs only became apparent once the collection had come together. ‘They are largely songs of female struggle, suffering, strength and endurance. But there are many about love as well, with all the complications that brings.’ On ‘The Moon and Stars’, she has rewritten portions of the lyrics to foreground the anger of a woman facing betrayal and abandonment. Discussing its references to unwanted pregnancy, abortion and the herb rue, she explains: ‘I wanted to represent these experiences from the woman’s perspective’, adding that she wanted ‘to connect us with her experience’. Her additions also draw on the final scene of John B. Keane’s 1959 play Sive, in which the title character flees an arranged marriage and takes her own life.

Peat will play London’s Union Chapel on 3 November, a show that has already sold out, followed by Dublin’s Vicar Street later that month. Dates in Amsterdam and Paris follow early next year, before a return to London for a newly announced Barbican show on 19 May 2027. Tickets for the Paris and Barbican dates go on sale on Friday 18 September at 10am.