In July this year Please Please You will celebrate its 21st anniversary. It has put on hundreds upon hundreds of great live music events in its home city of York, Leeds, and many other Northern points beyond since beginning life back in 2005. And looking at some of the shows that Joe Coates – the man who is Please Please You – has already got planned for us we are going to be in for a rather special 2026.
The PPY events ball gets well and truly rolling next Tuesday, 13th January at York’s premier live music venue, The Crescent with a screening of a documentary feature film about the Elephant 6 Recording Company & collective: Neutral Milk Hotel, the Olivia Tremor Control, the Apples In Stereo, Elf Power, the Music Tapes, the Minders, the Gerbils, of Montreal, Beulah, Dressy Bessy, Great Lakes, and more.
There will also be some short sets that night from three top bands from the York underground – Speedreaders, The Leaflets, and Troutflies. And what is even more the whole event is free! The fun starts at 7pm.
Come the 29th of January another local band, the awesome Nature Kids will be at The Crescent opening for Norfolk’s finest Brown Horse and their “distorted, teary-eyed and country-tinged, music for long lonely drives and late, late nights in strange places.”
In between these two shows, first the former Goat Girl member Naima Bock will be playing a stripped back show at the Crescent on the 21st of January and then three nights later the excellent Portland singer-songwriter Jeffrey Martin will be appearing at rise @ bluebird, an intimate evening arts venue located in the Bluebird Bakery and Café in Acomb a mile and a half from York city centre.
And Please Please You’s January schedule isn’t quite finished there as working in collaboration with Say Owt the Crescent will be opening its doors on the evening of the 30th January to welcome the Merseyside artist She Drew The Gun as Louisa Roach explores stories, songs, and poems from her four albums and beyond.
Into February and the PPY pace shows no sign of slackening off. Leaders of the Los Angeles’ Paisley Underground movement The Dream Syndicate in the early ‘80s are coming to Band on the Wall in Manchester on the 1st of the month when they will perform their visceral 1984 album Medicine Show in its entirety.
The following night it is back to the Crescent in York when the north-east indie legends Maximo Park bring an intimate warm-up show to the former working men’s club as they prepare to celebrate 20 years of their debut album A Certain Trigger. Opening that night will be fellow English indie-rockers Art Brut. Tickets have long since sold out for what promises to be a very special occasion.
The dust will have barely had time to settle at the Crescent before two nights later on the 4th of February the venerable Northern Irish rockers Ash will be playing both new material – they released their ninth studio album Ad Astra last October – and classics from their thirty year back catalogue. It will be no surprise to know that this is another show that quickly sold out.
The Bristol quartet Langkamer are back in York on the 12th of February at The Fulford Arms celebrating the release of new album No on Breakfast Records this month.
Then on the 28th of February the truly great musician and songwriter from Cavan in Ireland, Lisa O’Neill returns to Leeds and will be appearing at the legendary City Varieties Music Hall
And these are just some of the highlights from Please Please You in the first two months of 2026 with loads more brilliant shows to come in March, April, and later in the year including Joan Shelley (Brudenell Social Club, Leeds), bar Italia (Leeds Irish Centre), Love with Johnny Echols (Brudenell Social Club), and Colin Blunstone (Howard Assembly Room, Leeds).
More information about these events can be found HERE or in the individual venue links that are listed above.
