Radie Peat Shares “Hares On The Mountain,” the Opening Track of Her Solo Debut

Radie Peat has spent years in Lankum, the Dublin group that treats folk songs as structures to be stretched, slowed and darkened. Her first solo album, No Human Tongue Can Tell, is out 11/13 on Rough Trade, and she has now shared its opening track, “Hares On The Mountain.”

The song is a traditional English ballad, most famously recorded by Shirley Collins. Peat does not handle it as a museum piece. Her voice stays steely and strange over arrangements that move slowly and carry real weight, closer to drone than to accompaniment. It is the same instinct she brings to Lankum, applied to one voice instead of a group.

Two earlier tracks from the record, “Still I Love Him” and “The Moon And Stars,” already pointed in this direction, so the album’s shape is becoming clear before anyone hears it whole.

That “Hares On The Mountain” opens the record matters. Placing a traditional song first, ahead of any original material, suggests an album that defines itself through inheritance rather than departure. Peat has sung this repertoire in Lankum long enough that the solo frame does not send her looking for a new language. It leaves her alone with the old one.