Radie Peat's Solo Debut: A Stark, Unforgettable Folk Masterpiece

Radie Peat's debut solo album, No Human Tongue Can Tell, is the year's best folk album. The Lankum singer opens it without frills: just her voice, stark and low, each breath like air vibrating through a harmonium's metal reeds. She sings Hares on the Mountain to the tune Shirley Collins arranged for 1964's Folk Roots, New Routes, accompanying herself on Fender Rhodes piano before layering Mellotron and Wurlitzer. The quiet approach startles. It also moves.

What makes the album remarkable?

The record collects songs of female struggle, suffering, strength and endurance. Peat only realised this after limiting her choices, as she writes in her liner notes, by her "own mind and abilities" and "personal preferences". Epic statements clearly aren't her bag. The gut-deep connection with songs she's sung live for years matters more, and many arrive in new versions, pulsing with urgency.

Willow Garden, performed in a major-key chorus by Lankum in 2017, becomes a reverb-heavy elegy. Peat's handling of the lyric "poor little girl" buckles with sadness. She paints the woman "hanging out the wash" vividly against rolling guitar arpeggios in Same Old Man. In the frightening Still I Love Him — a song found by fellow Irish singer John Francis Flynn — a woman savagely beaten by her husband remains emotionally bound to him, and Peat summons oceans of yearning.

How does the production work?

Just as arresting is her take on Dark Horse on the Wind, Liam Weldon's 1966 lament for the lost dream of the Irish republic, written on the brink of the Troubles. "Now the warriors spring from the earth / To maim and kill their own," Peat sings against a solid drone.

John "Spud" Murphy's production brings out earthy, granular detail, from the sucking-in of air through Peat's concertina bellows on Cailín Deas to the disruptive thwack of Eleanor Myler's drums. Traditional songs tasting like fresh blood: stunning, brutal and unforgettable.

What else arrived this month?

• Bróna McVittie — Supernatural (Company of Corkbots). An ambitious collection of fairy songs for Samhain, arriving alongside a self-penned anthology. The prevailing sound feels like a soft-folk successor to William Orbit's work for Madonna during the Frozen era. Lithuanian singer Jausmė, Ukrainian bandura player Anastasiya Voytyuk and Spanish flamenco guitarist Antonia Jiménez contribute gorgeous turns.
• Bird in the Belly — Only Dogs As Friends (GF*M). Another solid set of strange folk from Laura Ward and Ben Webb, lit by warm, radio-friendly arrangements. Highlights: the rousing Go Along Bobby and the shivery Lambs.
• Guy Buttery — Improvisations from a Rural Church: Volume 1. The South African guitarist brings the swarmandal (an Indian zither) and the shakuhachi (Japanese bamboo flute) into ambient folk explorations around a pump organ in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands. Listen out for bats, birds, rats, passing tractors and stormy weather adding tension and texture.

Peat's record sets the bar. The rest of the month's releases are good; hers is the one that will linger.