Euchrid Eucrow

ALT.FOLK

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.