Unicorn [Import]

Marc Bolan & T Rex | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (November 2, 1998)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Import
• Label: Polygram Int'l
• ASIN: B00000I7BA
• Also Available in: Audio CD
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #349,092 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Chariots of Silk

2. 'Pon a Hill

3. The Seal of Seasons

4. The Throat of Winter

5. Cat Black (The Wizard's Hat)

6. Stones for Avalon

7. She Was Born to Be My Unicorn

8. Like a White Star, Tangled and Far, Tulip That's What You Are

9. Warlord of the Royal Crocodiles

10. Evenings of Damask

11. The Sea Beasts

12. Iscariot

13. Nijinsky Hind

14. The Pilgrim's Tale

15. The Misty Coast of Albany

16. Romany Soup

Editorial Reviews

Reissue of their third album, which reached #12 in the U.K.when originally released in 1969. 16 tracks, including'Catblack (The Wizard's Hat)' and 'Chariots Of Silk'. 1998A&M release.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Music for the Hippie Faerie Festival, June 13, 2002

By 

happydogpotatohead "happydogpotatohead" (New Orleans, LA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Unicorn (Audio CD)

After hearing Unicorn a friend once said to me, "This makes me feel like I got too high." I had to laugh, because even though I love this album, I could see her point.

This is Marc Bolan at his most exotic. It's acoustic hippie music, unabashedly so. The lyrics are so convoluted and peculiar that they're basically uninterpretable, and the various accents and pronunciations Bolan lays on them makes them even more arcane. Yet they seem to make their own internal sense in the highly peculiar context of this odd little album.

The music is melodic and pretty, in its own strange way. The tunes are not complex, but Bolan and Steve Peregrine Took layer them with myriads of sounds. Toy pianos, harmoniums, various kinds of stringed instruments, ethnic percussion, and whatnot embellish all these songs and add a layer of homespun strangeness.

I like to listen to this all the way through in one sitting, because breaking it up seems to ruin the mood. In a sense, all the songs here seem as though they are thematically connected, although on reading the lyrics they're not. There's just a unified feel to the whole album, which is why I don't want to dissect the songs in this review. It needs to be heard all together.

This CD is not going to appeal to everyone. People who prefer the hard rock of "Slider" or "Electric Warrior" will be utterly flummoxed by this music. It's unabashedly fey and very English and bears no relation to "rock" in any but the most vague sense.

But "Unicorn" is peculiar and delightful, the kind of music that very few people are brave enough to make any more. If you can put aside your modern cynical facade and enter Marc and Steve's world of faeries, mystic hinds, unicorns and other airy fairy "nonsense," you may find yourself charmed and delighted. A keeper.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Are you experienced ?, March 23, 1999

By 

Michel Laverdière [e-mail] (Montréal (Québec)) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Unicorn (Audio CD)

Nothing had a stronger effect on me as the very first time I have heard UNICORN by Tyrannosaurus Rex. A friend of mine was just back from London in 1969 with this recording and I remember vividly being first attracted by the cover (a picture of Marc Bolan and Steve Peregrin Took, in photographer Pete Sanders' house in London) and then the very first notes of guitar, hand drums and phonofiddle on Chariots Of Silk (the first track)... then this voice from another world. I couldn't catch a word Marc Bolan was singing and I thought he was singing in tongue. I was sure Marc Bolan was an elf and they had allowed him to cut a record. It entered deeply into my very soul and I knew from that moment that music woudn't be the same anymore. This was the only possible musical evolution after having survived to the Beatles' break up. To make it simple: UNICORN is to music what J.R.R. Tolkien's Bilbo The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings are to literature... For years I felt as I was probably the only one on earth with this unique devotion to UNICORN until, at almost 50, I met so many fans of Marc Bolan on the net, spread all over the world, thinking exactly the same and considering this album as the most important musical event of their life. Nothing less... believe it or not.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Helps me out, but she doesn't rock 'n' roll, May 7, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Unicorn (Audio CD)

"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".