Customer Reviews

Unicorn

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

"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".

I have all T.Rex albums and three Tyrannosaurus Rex albums and this is my most played. Marc Bolan should be regarded as the UK's no.1 rock star after creating such an enchanting and beautiful album as Unicorn. Chariots of Silk opens the album strongly and is one of my favourite Bolan tracks. There is not one weak song and it is hard to pick out highlights as the whole album blends together beautifully. The John Peel read story adds to the mysticism and shows the genius in Bolan. Steve Took was the best musician Bolan worked with and his percussion, backing harmonies and strange noises (!) work brilliantly with Marc's wonderful voice and choppy guitar rhythms. This is a truly unique album that cannot be compared to anyhting any artist has ever made. The only thing wrong with the album is that it is a little bit too short, or rather I am left wanting more. Please buy this album and enjoy it for the rest of your life.

My recommendation is short but meaningful. Out of the over 5000 vinyl albums and 3500 CD albums in my precious collection, of every type and genre of music, I consider UNICORN to be the best. Ever. Sonically rich, lyrically profound, and rife with mystery, magic, and melody.

One quick question? Why is T. Rex NOT in the rock and roll hall of fame? Maybe it's because American critics born and weaned on such mainstream music as the Beach Boys and the Four Seasons cannot possibly connect to such beautiful, haunting music such as this. Unicorn is the best T. Rex album, better than Electric Warrior, because of it's rich musical tapestries and provocative lyrics, better than Tanx, because here, the brevity of the songs adds to it's eternal mystique. I can listen to this album a thousand more times and never stop being swept away by the opening song cycle, from the simple guitar on Chariots of Silk, to the drone at the end of the Throat of Winter which breaks into the piano of Catblack. Every note bears listening to, here Bolan wrote beautiful melodies never again matched in his career, Nijinsky Hind, the Sea Beasts, the list goes on. My favorite piece is Like a White Star, with lines like "channels churning the grime, inky dreams of our time, into the sun where the white one, poems them into a rhyme." After thirty years of owning this masterpiece, after uncounted listenings, I STILL don't know what Bolan was trying to say....and yet it means so much to me. Took left soon after this album was released, and as we all know Bolan met Mickey Finn and went glam, but Unicorn remains his most fascinating and intricate work. A shame he isn't more recognized because of it.

I just listened to this entire album again after many years on the shelf. And I always forget how great an album it is. It's completely on par with The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper, but in a totally organic way. I am amazed at the way Bolin gets the most out of each instrument and voice. You get the impression that they just picked up any odd noise maker they could find and played with it until it fit into the song. Some of the vocal gimmicks border on being embarrassing, but in the context of the songs they work perfectly.

The closest thing I can think of to describe the tone of this music is a cross between Tolkien and Tom Waits 'Rain Dogs'. Fairy, but twisted just a bit. A great album

Marc Bolan's UNICORN Lp stands the test of time and is without question a true magical masterpiece. This is unlike any other record ever recorded. Bolan's Tolkien influenced lyrics and beautiful acoustic guitar melodies flow ever so sweetly together. The recording transports you into a mystical land where Chariots Of Silk ride by and there's Sea Beasts to see and Romany Soup to feast upon. Once you have heard this aural odyssey, you will want to travel back to hear the UNICORN tale - again and again!

Here is proof that Marc Bolan was not human at all, but a changeling child left to bewitch us with Faerie music. "Unicorn" is the sounds inside the Faerie ring, the voices beneath the haunted mound. Each track is a spell - chanting, rhythmic, magic. This is the sound of the world before men were so many, of a time before the consciousness of the world was the concrete thing we know today. It is the soundtrack for a distant dream before time. . . Ah, Albany, your misty coasts I see. . .

Patanjali, Shakespeare, Mozart, Marc Bolan. Every once in a while the cosmos bless us with a magician who transcends all normal forms of artistic expression and can pierce the very heart of the soul.

Like most of us, I was first exposed to Marc Bolan the pop star and at first didn't quite understand Tyrannosaurus Rex. But - it grows on you quickly. As many others describe here, this is no ordinary music. This is enchantment. It never gets old.

All four Tyrannosaurus Rex albums and the first T. Rex album all share this quality. To a lesser extent, Marc's later work too. Do not deprive yourself of this any longer.