Later Youth @ Rough Trade, London (Live Review)

Later Youth

Rough Trade

Words & Pics by Captain Stavros

Wurlitzer and wilted carnations

There’s losing your objectivity, and then there’s clocking a pristine 1967/68 Wurlitzer electric piano on stage before the first chord’s even been struck. One glimpse of that glistening artefact and any critical distance we’d planned to maintain was quickly thrown under the tour van. Later Youth, the musical alter ego of Jo Dudderidge (pronounced like “poetry,” if poetry came from Manchester and loved The Beatles), knows exactly how to disarm a room and this in-store at Rough Trade, Denmark Street was less a gig, more a séance in sunshine.

Before a single note, Jo laid a wreath of funeral flowers spelling out “Later Youth” in front of the Wurlitzer, the blossoms visibly wilting in the sticky London heat. Death’s always been a minor character in Dudderidge’s world; present, yes, but usually with a pint and a piano and, in case that wasn’t poignant enough, a small child with no known comprehension of mortality gave unsolicited stage design advice. There’s a darkly comic metaphor buried in that, but we’re not clever enough to dig it out.

Then came the call to arms or, more accurately, a warm wave of reverb-drenched delay that summoned the growing crowd closer. The set opened with ‘Apple of My Eye’, a track so chirpy and sinister it could only have come from a man smiling while singing, “as you punch me to my death with your hands around my neck.” It was a bouncing, piano-led lurch into baroque pop noir, a maraca shaking somewhere in the mix like an eerie carnival held inside a teacup.

Track two saw Jo giving heartfelt thanks to the room. A moment ago, we were one of three ghosts rattling around the shop, but now the space was fully alive and very much sweating.

By track three, the full Later Youth sonic identity began to unfurl: soft towel-muted snares, a soapbox kick drum, upright basslines that walked rather than ran. It all felt faintly like a late-night lounge act at the back of a dusty ole pub in a parallel 1972; refined, yes, but still willing to get a bit weird round the edges.

Track four gave us pure Beatles energy; Jo yelling into the mic channeled a young Lennon. It was the most Fab Four the set got, and it wore the influence proudly: plucky chord work, creamy harmonies, and that slight sense of knowing it’s all a bit ridiculous, really.

Then came “Lurker”; perhaps the most telling moment of the set. “These songs sound better with a band,” Jo admitted, and while that might be true on record, live there was something charmingly exposed about it all. He swapped spots with backing vocalist Hannah Nicholson for this one, trading piano for acoustic guitar. The two voices, brushed together like old photographs, made the song feel both intimate and distant, befitting a track named after someone who prefers to linger in the background.

‘Hotel Venezuela’ followed, all Wes Anderson melancholy and Kinks-ian charm; that plucky rhythm guitar and organ interplay calling to mind lost summer holidays and sepia-soaked postcards never sent.

By the penultimate track, Dudderidge introduced something “never played in this configuration before.” It was ghostly, sepia-toned again, like being in the back room of an old Western saloon where the piano plays itself and someone whispers, “what’s happened to your eyes?” Whether that was the lyric or our overheated imagination is hard to say.

The final takeaway? Later Youth isn’t just one man and a piano; it’s a whole attic of sounds, half-remembered influences, and beautiful imperfections. Much of the studio polish was left behind for this set, revealing a different angle to Dudderidge’s songwriting: looser, rawer, but no less intricate. It was less fine dining, more rural cooking, and like any great homemade meal, it stuck to the ribs.