Homegrown (The Wasp Star Home Demos)
Rather like those school mathematics exams in which you were expected to hand in all your arithmetic doodlings as well as your final answers,Homegrownis XTC proffering the various porta-studio jottings and embryonic ideas which eventually added up to theWasp Star (Apple Venus Volume 2)album (a pass with flying colors, lest we forget). Songs don't write themselves. Even seasoned scribes like Andy Partridge and Colin Moulding need to put a bit of elbow grease into it. Thus, every fumbling bedroom troubadour in the land will empathise with Partridge as he mutters and busks his way through a gestative "Wheel and the Maypole" or signs off an early draft of "The Man Who Murdered Love" (nothing like the final version) with a self-questioning "yeah, there might be something there." Rest assured--demos or not--this is a highly listenable collection of quality pop with illuminating sleeve notes from the composers in question. Colin Moulding's marital-strife-flavored "In Another Life," for example, was inspired by Stanley Holloway, Andrew Gold, and 1970s sitcoms likeGeorge and Mildred. --Kevin Maidment