Literary references fill Brighton three-piece Esben And The Witch’s music. James Joyce’s daughter, a woman crippled by depression, gets a mention on Lucia, At The Precipice.

On Eumenides, a track that takes Aeschylus’ Oresteia as its starting point, there is Greek mythology and Herman Hesse. Even the band’s name comes from a Danish fairytale.

It is a shame Mary Shelley is not mentioned. Frankenstein’s monster is an excellent metaphor for the band. He is a creature of horror (the trio have referred to themselves as “nightmare pop”), who likes to live in the shadows (“The things people see as dark and horrible we see as interesting,” says guitarist Daniel Copeman).

The popular conception of the monster bears little resemblance to Shelley’s original creation (the band say their “aesthetic vision” is often misunderstood) and the novel remains a modern parable that man should not play God because his creations will turn upon him.

Cramped in the downstairs corner of a dimly-lit Brighton pub – which seemed an apt location to meet a group of (supposedly) miserable goths – singer Racheal Davies, programmer Thomas Fisher and axeman Copeman never threaten to turn on each other. They are passionate about their music and polite almost to a fault. The only time they slam down the burgers they are eating is when I ask about the pasting Jack Black gave their debut album, Violet Cries, in a German mazagine.

The star of School Of Rock and Gulliver’s Travels said Davies’ vocals take too long to arrive on opening track Argyria.

She has “no words” for him – perhaps missing the irony – but Copeman is more forthcoming.

“I can see why people of that disposition wouldn’t like it, but if you’ve got nothing nice to say…”

The 25-year-old is considered and thoughtful, and reels himself in diplomatically.

“I thought it was a real shame, because he did seem to be getting it. The problem is that it is the first track on the album and the build-up is long, with three minutes of instrumental noise right at the beginning of a song, so you can’t argue with his initial reasoning.

“It’s the same reason we could never play the track as a stand-alone live – but that time is there because it is supposed to set the scene, it is supposed to be a build-up.”

As an album opener it sets a grimy scene and paints a bleak and desolate picture of what’s to come. The band say they want to create a world in which their listeners can immerse themselves and escape their surroundings.

They promise introspective soundscapes, a rose-tinted view of the past, gothic romance and the pleasure of isolation.

Argyria rifles through the adversity of human abnormality. The word describes a condition in which over-exposure to silver oxide turns the human skin silvery blue. Inspiration came from American politician Stan Jones, who began taking colloidal silver in 1999 amid fears that disruptions caused by the Millennium bug might lead to a shortage of antibiotics.

“He was worried after Y2K happened all the silver in the world would be used to fix computers,” says Copeman. “He overdosed on it because it was part of his medicine. He gave himself Argyria.

“Now he sees himself as a pioneer of physical health and has retained this bizarre intake of silver colloidal to stave off other diseases. He is sure he is healthier than he has ever been and he has applied for Senate again. But he is bright blue.”

Fisher, who comes across as the rational father figure of the band, guiding his two colleagues back to earth as their imagination runs away with them, believes people are naturally drawn to see the darker aspects of the band’s music, even though there are elements of light and celebration.

Davies jumps in. She says Jones was fascinating to them because they see beauty in things other people deem terrible and macabre. But, one might ask, where is the romance in a discoloured political figure?

“I think that is a quite beautiful image,”

she says. “There is beautiful side to it.”

Eumenides, the penultimate track on the album, begins with gentle picked guitar and huge, swirling effects. A regal, hymnal voice arrives, which is swallowed up by angry noise that sounds like a sonic recreation of post-industrial urban decline. The origins of this song lie in Francis Bacon’s Triptych 1976, which led to Oresteia and the Greek Furies. It is an attempt to recreate a journey from sorrow to madness, to capture the idea of justifying acts of violence for the greater good or retribution.

“The Furies are a great encapsulation of the things we find intriguing and wonderful,” Copeman says. “They are vengeful and brutal and exacting and unflinching. They are hardly a symbol of the triumph of good over evil. They dance on that precipice, which is something we really enjoy.”

Three years ago there was no Esben And The Witch. Then Fisher persuaded workmate Copeman to share the tracks he had been working on with a live audience. Since then, after enlisting keen poet Davies to sing, they have been nominated for the BBC Sound Of 2011 award, nominated as Q Magazine’s Next Big Thing 2010 and found the support of the soi-disant thinking-man’s music press: “a balm made from sumptuous, dark atmospheres,” said online zine The Quietus.

Given they have only been playing their instruments as long as they have been together, the national and international recognition (as well as playing in Europe they have recently been to the US where they toured with Foals) has naturally come as a surprise.

“Abject shock”, says Copeman.

Listening to Violet Cries you can hear that naivety. Musicians with years of experience but no success will either be embittered or impressed that these three beginners have been signed to Matador Records – home to Sonic Youth and Interpol. They were the label’s first signing for six years in August 2010. Copeman is still suprised to read himself referred to as a “guitarist” in the press and Fisher says they still only have a rudimentary understanding of how their instruments work. They may yet change the division of labour because they do not quite know who is best at what.

Clearly mistakes have been left in, which is possibly what gives the album its primal feel, and there is a sense that by not quite knowing what they were doing they have ventured down paths they would otherwise never have wandered on to.

“I’d never sang in public before,” says Davies. “It was daunting. The naivety is both a challenge and liberating. It’s something we still possess. We are not restrained by it.”

Some suggest that Esben And The Witch are part of a new goth movement inhabited by artists such as The xx, Zola Jesus and The Big Pink.

Others compare them to female-fronted bands with gloomy outlooks such as Florence And The Machine. But, as with Frankenstein’s monster, these people seem to be missing the point: the public perception bears little resemblance to the artists’ intention.

They say they are part of no scene, either in Brighton or nationally. They control every aspect of their image fastidiously, and their personal histories are off the record because they want to remain in the background.

“We worked really hard with the music to create something that is enveloping and has an otherworldly aesthetic,” says Fisher. “We are striving to create something that people can become totally immersed in. Even seemingly trivial facts can undermine that.”

Fisher and Copeman have been in Brighton as long as they have been in the band. Davies, an architecture graduate, has been here six years. Violet Cries has been a work in progress for most of that time. It was self-recorded and produced in six months at the Brighton location they agree perfectly encapsulates the band – an old public toilet on the seafront in Madeira Drive.

“It’s cheap,” jokes Copeman of Studio 284, a Brighton institution for penniless aspiring musicians.

“In the summer you’d go in at midday and you’d be trying to write something that was atmospheric – as the album turned out. Then three hours later you’d step out into blinding sunshine and crowds walking along the seafront. The juxtaposition of those things was surreal. It genuinely captures the band.”

The three members first bonded over bands I Like Trains, Radiohead and Godspeed You! Black Emperor, but the friendship was cemented when they all agreed on the brilliance of Mikhail Bulgakov’s posthumous critique of Russian social order, The Master And Margarita. Recently they’ve been passing Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse around the tour bus, which for Copeman has become “an albatross around my neck”.

There was no blueprint for Violet Cries except to create a “grower” with “layers”. Davies loves albums which, on first listen make you unsure of what they are trying to achieve.

“You should want to listen to it straight away on repeat, and it in its entirety and not on shuffle, because the sequencing is important and it makes it a body of work.”

She cites the ordering on PJ Harvey’s White Chalk and Pantha Du Prince’s Black Noise. Copeman, on the other hand, found Two Dancers by Wild Beasts, a band Esben And The Witch have supported, inspiring.

“Every time I think that the classic indie band – drummer, bass player, two guitarists – has died or reached its logical conclusion, someone will make an album like Two Dancers where if the songwriting is considered and it is good enough, it doesn’t matter what you use or what the sound is.”

For a band that likes to shroud itself in mystique, the trio make plenty of references. They say Brighton’s architecture, the “classic romanticism” evoked by walks around the old Regency squares, and bleak winter bus journeys to Peacehaven all make their way onto Violet Cries. Bands from the city they say they share an affinity for include Hind Ear, Foxes, Cold Pumas and Birdengine.

“We want to create more than just a song, we want an aesthetic with signposts to the meaning. We want there to be a choice: if you just want to hear the music then ok, but there is more to investigate should you desire to do so,” Fisher explains. “The music does not connect directly to an original idea. We fuse these with our own ideas, feelings, emotions, and, of course, artistic licence.”

Starts 8pm. Tickets cost £7. Call 01273 709709.