Fire Track: Anthony Moore – “Earthbound Misfit”

Anthony Moore’s post-Slapp Happy output, for years an underrated-to-outright-unknown quantity, achieves another dimensional plane with Home of the Demo, out October 25 on Drag City. This third archival release from his personal tape library triangulates upon the art-pop qualities found in his previously unreleased OUT (1976, officially issued 2020) and the new wave-adjacent Flying Doesn’t Help (1979, reissued 2022), finding Anthony’s early/mid-80s compositions drifting whimsically into the actual mainstream. With today’s news, the single “Earthbound Misfit” releases from Anthony’s orbit — an early version of Pink Floyd’s 1987 hit “Learning to Fly”, which Moore co-wrote.

Home of the Demo unpacks ten tracks from what we might otherwise call a lost era: subtitled “from the dawn of bedsit recording, on the cusp of the analogue-to-digital shift” and sounding nearer to DIY than we’d hear from any of your fancy modern kit! Using “a few hundred quids’ worth of gear balanced precariously on bookshelves and table tops in bedrooms and basements”, as Anthony puts it, he produced a spread of well-appointed, ambitiously clever songs between 1978–1984 for himself and others — such as his friend David Gilmour, who used a couple pieces from Home of the Demo for Pink Floyd’s 1987 comeback album, A Momentary Lapse of Reason. Forty-some years on, we find these songs marvelously mellowed by time and latter-day mastering: from the heavenly stretches of “Me and Neil Diamond”, featuring one of those hot young Bunnymen on vocals, to an irresistible version of “Judy, Judy” with soaring lead guitars from the ominously monikered “Page The Oracle”. Hmm hmm!

Let’s talk about that “Earthbound Misfit”, though — because really, folks, it’s as if Anthony knew he was demoing a song that was gonna scale charts around the world! The unique journey of this track is a head-turner, flying from Anthony’s basement into Gilmour’s houseboat-turned-studio to later become a Pink Floyd favorite. Before that though, there was this “Earthbound Misfit”: the drum machine dry and austere, the keyboards sucking you into the vastness of space, the guitars stretching backwards through time. The lyrics feature a suitable Floyd-ishness; but even on its own, the chorus couplet “Can’t keep my eyes from the circling sky/Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earthbound misfit, I” feels carved from eternal rock.

Perhaps the songs on Home of the Demo aren’t so much “secret” as they were too “extra” for the basic cut of the proceedings at the time; nevertheless, Drag City’s happy to be responsible for hawking this particular stroke of extras. The inconvenient truth of Anthony Moore lets loose on October 25, 2024!

Pre-order / Pre-save Home of the Demo: lnk.to/homeofthedemo