Daughter @ Manchester Albert Hall, 21 Jan

It's oh so quiet… And it really is. Just as Daughter start to test their voice with second album Not to Disappear, tonight they perform an abrupt about-face. As they lunge into How – the new record's heftiest moment – the shock is palpable: you can hardly hear them. That's from the back where you'd expect their weighty beats, dual guitars and Elena Tonra's voice to envelop. From the front, where you need to feel it in your chest, the live mix favours clarity over bottom end. It wafts around the hall. 

Aesthetic preference or baffling cock-up? Sadly, unlike Arcade Fire's show at the Apollo a few years back, where pleas to 'Turn it up!' eventually saw the sound engineer flick the switch from 6 to 10, it stays this way throughout. It makes for an uncomfortably polite evening and Daughter are – and this is surely clear by now – anything but polite. 

Eschewing the in-house lighting rig in favour of minimal floor spots, and playing largely from the shadows, Daughter shrink and retreat: maddening. A vast crowd (though, again, the Albert Hall is uncomfortably rammed) remains rapt, though, and there are moments. A one-two of Winter and Smother is shattering. Shallows, that desperate and bitter hymnal, ascends. We will them on: the wrong dynamic entirely, of course, for a band who typically connect at depth. But, stymied by a presentation so unfitting, this is a show in search of a flashpoint, of an impetus that never comes. An oddball one-off? Surely. Devastating beyond words? That and more. [Gary Kaill]