Search - Marc Bolan, T-Rex :: Unicorn

Helps me out, but she doesn't rock 'n' roll

Michel Laverdière atma@dsuper.net | 05/08/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

""Unicorn" is the Winter. The album is Marc Bolan's mind wandering as he reads a book of childrens fables by the light of a fire. It is NOT hippie music, drug music, or amusing tales of hobbits and dwarves. And it shows few signs of the rockstar martyrdom of "The Slider". "Unicorn" is Marc as a prophet or an ancient childhood wanderer. The songs embody what would become "Rarn" - quiet, elusive, ethereal - an album built on the premise of self-mythologising and believing all of it, no matter how absurd or impossible. The album is something of a ghost, looming in grey heavens, waiting to be born (again).The 4 Tyrannosaurus Rex albums fall into seasons, in feel and mention (though not release date). The back cover of the first album, "My People Were Fair...", reads "Tyrannosaurus Rex rose out of the sad and scattered leaves of an older summer... They blossomed with the coming of spring, children rejoiced and the earth sand with them. It will be a long and ecstatic summer." "A Beard of Stars" is spring, when they "blossom" with electric guitars, and "T-Rex", "Electric Warrior", and "The Slider" are the 3 months of the long and ecstatic summer. Was it planned that way all along?The albums fall into seasons, and "Unicorn" has all the romance and sleepiness of Winter. Quiet desolation and a mind wandering, trying to escape its humble home... anywhere and everywhere. The album starts with a ride on "Chariots of Silk", in which a woman with stars on her shoulders rides thru the heavens. "Catblack" is a tour of strange people and places, "a yellow orphan dancer rich in nature's costly gold", "a mountain man with sky-blue teeth"... friends, all of whom are aware of their magic, to keep us company in thought while "the throat of winter is upon us". "Nijinsky Hind", half dancer (Vaslav Nijinsky), half deer, is "a remnant of Earth as it once stood" and has the "textures of Earth's distant future", graceful and magical. And that's what the album is... a remnant of Earth as it once stood and is it oneday will be, but as it always is in pure and gentle thought.The most beautiful song on the album is "The Seal of Seasons", a song based on a Celtic myth. In the song, Marc (or anyone else) is watching a seal play in the water, " who swam and moved just like a prancer, a gypsy dancer". She takes human form and comes to dry land ("...come and be real for us") as a human lover... and leaves with the daylight. The only things worth touching are those that are sacred. And everything and everyone in this album IS sacred. And beautiful. Not "trippy". The album is pure beauty, pure thought, and pure love... untouched by circumstance or harsh sunlight. It's all of the people and animals you knew and loved when you were 4 years old and half asleep... and so much more. Possibly the best album Marc ever released, and certainly the most beautiful. It was also the last "acoustic" album (though electric guitar pops up a little). That being said, if you only like "rock" music, you probably won't like this album. Shame. In that case, buy "Electric Warrior"."

What we think is weird is normal to the slider

.Richard | england | 11/23/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"marc bolan and steve took the orignal bongos guitar player various other instruments who with marc bolan after his split with the mod group "john's children" "unicorn" being tyrannosaurus rex third it's a great weird trippy exciting album which the late john peel loved so much he read a poem on here it sends shivers down my spine to think that none of the performers on this album are longer with us

a tremdous album from marc bolan and CO

GOD BLESS marc bollan steve took and john peel

ROCK ON"