A.A. Williams- The Deaf Institute, Manchester: Live Review

By Mike Ainscoe on 2nd February 2026 • ( Leave a comment )

A.A. Williams- The Deaf Institute, Manchester – 30th January 2026

A.

You know A.A. Williams and her band are in town. Onstage, the large capital A. logo, backlit silhouettes and a dense haze. A setting to match the musical mood. A mood where the massed genres of Doom, Progressive, Psychedelic, Post Rock and Metal come together under the umbrella of what A.A. (or just ‘A’?) cheekily terms ‘Death Gospel’.

It’s been relatively quiet three years in terms of recorded output since Forever Blue and As The Moon Rests. A pair of albums that we rated particularly highly. With just 2023’s Without You I’m Nothing cover and the latest song, Just A Shadow to add to the availabilty list, we have no qualms about a set based around those two genre, even career defining albums. As long as Dirt, Melt and For Nothing are in the set, we’re going to go home happy.

FACE MELTING

Support act Spotlights take the exploration of the dynamic range to often challenging extremes. Playing their EP straight through, they promise that if they’ve not melted our faces off (they did a decent job on the ears), then A.A. would certainly finish the job. With more than a touch of subtlety, she does as promised.

As the black clad trio take the stage, the presentation is standard A.A. The smoke machine delivering a constant stream over the top of the keyboard rig, a set of strip lights as the main illumination at the rear of the stage and two sets of pedals boards which contain enough hardware to create and distort anything that comes down the line from the guitars. It’s a mighty sound generated by three people – A.A.’s right hand man occupying a space where keyboards switch with bass and extra guitar.

She recalls playing here in the past. “I remember the mirrorball,” she notes in one of the few moments she shyly addresses a full house who’ve been intent on absorbing absorbed her innermost thoughts. Introspective thoughts cloaked with what the fanbase has come to hail as a stark intimacy and emotional gravitas. The gentle sway of Golden has her declaring “I thought that love was mighty” as the twelve song set begins a journey that’s an exercise, nay masterclass in light and shade, in the quiet bit/loud bit dynamics. An exercise done with a panache and skill that ‘s the the personification of the iron fist in a velvet glove subtlety. Where Spotlights batter home their intent, A.A. strokes with a calming empathy.

ODES TO DARKNESS

New song, Just A Shadow gets an early airing. What she’s called “an ode to the darkness inside…a cruel friend lurking just outside of view. A presence that brings cold comfort.” However, it has an anger, the “vicious commentary bruising every f@@king inch of me” fighting against the need to forgive. A sign of things to come hopefully as the anticipated combo of Forever Blue and As The Moon Rests . Both mighty albums, so the selections are the cream of a plentiful crop that breach the territory recently, but no longer held by Anathema and that Spotlights can aim for.

The first behemoth comes in Love And Pain. One moment crooning and epitaph, the next, a monolithic crescendo kicks in. A giant tsunami of sound and desperate vocal that drifts into an enveloping warmth that shifts to her cradling the body of the guitar in the almost inaudible moments of Glimmer. As she strums gently, she may use the song to decry that she wasn’t meant to see the sun, but confirms the beauty in darkness.

DOWNTUNED AND DIRTY

True to form, Dirt and Melt take their crowd pleasing turns. The former casting out a soft sway and the “Make me alone again, safely” line is almost heartbreaking, while Melt offers something more ominous, with spell invocations to pass as lyrics. The diversions into shrill guitars and the option to choose from an armoury of dirty riffs are the elements that satisfy the Metal and Damnation factions. As The Moon Rests is all downtuned and dirty, parts of which are worthy of any Doom Metal riffing.

For Nothing is the piece of music that gets the ‘worth the ticket price alone’ award. A.A. glides her fingernails in fine upstrokes across the strings, to create an ethnic presence across the intro. Who needs the yellow desert streams of Kashmir? The song broods and hovers for a full four minutes before hitting an explosive blow. In a year that’s already seen us revel in some impossibly fine live music, this may be the finest six or seven minutes of the year so far. The bar continues to get nudged forever higher.