If we are to take Please Please You’s spring schedule as our yardstick for what live music awaits us in 2017 then this year is going to be a very very good one indeed. The York-based promoter kicks off the New Year at the city’s The Basement in a little over a fortnight’s time with Jolie Holland & Samantha Parton – founding members of the celebrated Canadian folk band The Be Good Tanyas – and the current programme of events then runs right through to the end of May when the venerable post-punk band The Monochrome Set will appear at The Crescent in York.
In between times Please Please Please You will put on a further 16 shows across York, Leeds and Manchester, a hugely varied programme that embraces some of the very best folk, roots, garage, and indie music that is around today.
Selected highlights include the beautifully blissed-out cosmic country of Nashville’s Promised Land Sound who will be playing one of only four UK dates on their forthcoming European Tour when they take to The Fulford Arms’ stage on the 2nd of February
A mere four days later, in what is another fine coup for Please Please You, The Crescent will welcome Brooklyn indie folk-rock foursome Big Thief whose debut album Masterpiece certainly lived up to its name when it was released in the middle of last year.
And then it is back to The Fulford Arms the following Saturday to catch Nadia Reid’s first ever appearance in York. The New Zealand singer-songwriter’s debut album Listen was described by Pitchfork as “a soothing, folky Americana album that recalls the work of Laura Marling, Gillian Welch, Hope Sandoval and Nina Nastasia”.
Come the 12th of March, the former lead singer with Edinburgh band Idlewild, Roddy Woomble makes a most welcome return to York for the first time in four years, whilst the following month fellow Scot and the man behind those legendary independent imprints Fence and Lost Map Records, Johnny Lynch will be appearing at the Brudenell Social Club in Leeds in the guise of Pictish Trail.
Then to celebrate the release of their new record in April, Holy Moly & the Crackers with “their exciting and visceral blend of rock, pop, folk, blues, Balkan, klezmar, ska and reggae” will light up the respective stages of Gullivers in Manchester, the Brudenell and The Crescent on consecutive nights on the 26th, 27th and 28th of the month.
And just a matter of days before The Monochrome Set, the quite magnificent American folk and indie rock singer and guitarist Angel Olsen – whose third album My Woman rightly appeared high up in many critics’ 2016 Album of the Year lists – plays Leeds Stylus in a show produced in association with Hey! Manchester, Brudenell Social Club and Paper & Iron Booking.
Full details for all of Please Please You’s upcoming shows, including how to buy tickets for them, can be found HERE
