Two young women in full-length angel-white Victorian frocks flank a bearded young man in a tank top sitting on a stool. As he clutches his acoustic guitar for dear life, the dark-haired woman on his right puts her bow to her viola while the accordion the ringlet-curled woman holds slowly wheezes into life. Led by the young man and blanketed by the spare, elongated and gothic (but not Gothick) arrangements, all three give voice to a slow-burning funeral parlour entertainment that threatens to break down in tears any second.

This is Euchrid Eucrow, the precious Brighton trio named after the mute narrator of near neighbour Nick Cave's 1988 bible-black novel, And the Ass Saw the Angel. Abi Fry (viola) and Caroline Weeks (accordion) may be kindred spirit collaborators of Bat For Lashes and British Sea Power, but the woozily desolate airs they produce are more in tune with an east European wake than anything resembling an alt.folk pop concert. In between songs they're charm itself, but once they give voice to the monster within, the low keening hymnals sound like something sacred.

4/5

The List

Wounded Knee holds special rhythms in his head, and with a mouth shaped like plasticine, spits, croons and sways through an linear a cappella set. Using only a delay pedal as his backing, rather than the usual loop, he races through ideas, sound constantly streaming like water from a rusty tap, fearing the loss of power. For much of the thirty minutes, he is wordless, tiny percussive tongue tappings, aboriginal harmonies. The echos of his voice are touching on their story, the sounds of frustration and mourning trickle out, but it is only when he finishes with the song Canary that there is real history in his voice. He can truly tell the tale, for he knows this one from beginning till end. The wordlessness has hinted at a rich, beautiful voice, but hearing his voice revealed, with no backing, sends a silence through the room. "When Canary stops his singing/you know somethings wrong/its a warning that he's bringing…" and the narrative ends, with an ending we can understand and roar in appreciation of.

Chippewa Falls too are voiceless, but the spirit of Ben Chasny softly whispers aloud through the two guitar set up, little motifs making up the post.rock party tunes, compacting the ideas to keep your attention. These songs would be perfect to fall asleep to, because they assure you that all sound is in experienced hands, that relaxing is alright for a few moments. A broken guitar speaker gives the tunes a more forceful, juddering action, almost veering into pushiness and punishment, as drums that might fall apart crash tentatively. The girls playing guitar are the older, cooler girls that you saw in the school corridors, that you romanticised in your head, until they opened their mouths, and you realised they were shyer than you. But for all its shyness, the music is never apologetic, always speaking, no matter how quietly it might be.