Live Review: AA Williams - Deaf Institute, Manchester
30th January 2026
Support: Spotlights
Words: Dan Barnes
Photos: Rich Price
The wonderful and unique venue that is Manchester’s Deaf Institute seems to revel in hosting some of music’s most wonderful and unique artists and you know, whenever you pay a visit, it’s going to be an interesting musical experience.
New York’s impossible-to-categorize three-piece, Spotlights, have a early start, hitting the stage at barely seven-thirty, before mesmerising, hypnotising and brutalising the keenest in attendance with a set of song which cover such disparate genres as progressive metal, shoe-gaze, gothic, jazz, post-punk and art-rock, all within a forty-five minute performance window. If there’s central core around which the rest revolves, I would stick my neck out and suggest post-rock, but that is simply a foundation from which all else grows.
In honour of its tenth anniversary, Spotlights is performing the debut album, Tidals, front to back, opening with the post-rock shoegazes of Intro and Walls, where the hypnotism begins to weave its magic from the outset. Moving from soaring highs to crushing lows never seems too jarring at any point, simply the path Spotlights chose to follow. The Grower twists and turns in post-metal majesty, unfurling long, dense passages, and exploring the ideas to completion. Hover features an ambient interlude, giving the Deaf Institute a moment to catch our collective breaths, before the dominant passages of To the End, and banquet of a tune, Joseph, demonstrates the full glory of Spotlights’ aesthetic vision in just eight-and-a-half minutes. With Tidals complete, there’s time for just one more, Algorithmic, from the band’s most recent Alchemy For the Dead full length released in 2023.
Theirs’ is a performance that needs to be experienced, the constant shifting of styles could be distracting, instead it works to form a coherent whole, that is, in itself, a fully immersive experience.
“I remember playing this room before, a couple of years ago.” says A.A. Williams, telling a now-packed Deaf Institute that she remembered the huge mirror ball which hangs from the ceiling, over the crowd. It’s the first time Ms Williams addresses the audience tonight; we’re three songs into the band’s first return to Manchester since captivating the crowd at Damnation back in 2024.
Golden, from the still most current 2022 record, As the Moon Rests, opens the show, after A.A., drummer Wayne Proctor and multi-instrumentalist, Matthew Daly, take to the stage, silhouetted like wraths against an orange-lit background. Beginning slow and understated, the song soon increases in orchestral grandeur and epic resolve to remind us that here is a unique talent, whose music isn’t necessarily made to hit you in the cerebellum or the gut, rather to play with your emotional centres.
New tune, Just a Shadow, gets only its third live outing, promising more of the A.A. Williams’ music we’re here to hear on an upcoming release. The blood-red lighting, along with the subject matter very much confirms the adage that Hell hath no fury than a woman scorned. Other newer tune, Splinter, has been doing the rounds for more than a year now, and has been available on A.A.’s Audiotree Live release, opening with a sedate contemplation before expanding through vast, panoramic song structures.
Forever Blue’s Love and Pain has a fluidity to this central musical themes, organic and natural in its progression, it feels somehow lush and comforting. Glimmer has A.A. switching guitars to give a more robust low-end, Control, from the self-titled debut, is a series of intersecting minor chords, each carrying pure heartbreak in every single one. Dirt comes over as an adult lullaby, the musical equivalent of the pacifying effects of eating mythological lotus flowers. Pristine has the same intoxicating effect, even into its stirring crescendo.
Sparse stage lighting means the band is primarily light from the rear, making them appear as shades and shadows, with only brief details observable. Despite its rudimentary design, the lighting is shockingly affective, supplementing the melancholic, otherworldly ambience of the music.
As the Moon Rests comes with an unexpected crunching guitar break and sumptuous keys, For Nothing is as down and dirty as the band get and, in the introduction to Melt, Ms Williams admits she’s never played a gig before where her attention was constantly distracted toward the Mona Lisa drinking Red Bull. She’s referring to the animated screens behind the Deaf Institute’s bar, whose promotional material has been playing on a constant loop since the hall opened this evening.
We had an early start because it’s Friday and there’s a club night afterward. Fan favourite, Evaporate brings the curtain down just short of ten o’clock, but the set had been its usual length, and it offers the opportunity to get home at a reasonable hour. There was a time when it would be the start of the night for me, but I’m fifty-five, grumpy and I need my sleep.
There is a uniqueness to A.A. Williams’ music that you can trace back to her lockdown Songs of Isolation album, on which she covered bands who have been an influence of her sound, notably Nine Inch Nails, Deftones and Nick Cave.
Another triumphant Manchester show from the London artist, and another perfect alignment of music and venue.
Photo Credits: Rich Price Photography
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