T.Rex

While it was the fifth T. Rex album (and though it was the first on which the act was billed as "T. Rex" rather than Tyrannosaurus Rex), T. Rex was the record on which T. Rex mainstay Marc Bolan truly began to come into his own. Most of the previous Tyrannosaurus Rex albums had actually done pretty well on the British LP charts, but here Bolan made a determined move away from the cult hippie audience and toward a younger pop/rock one, simultaneously steering away from psychedelic acoustic folk-rock and toward a harder sound with electric guitars. And, remarkably, this was not a sellout: in fact, the music became better, more powerful, and certainly more focused, grounded by basic chugging riffs, but still vested with plenty of lyrical and vocal eccentricity on Bolan's part. None of this is news to Bolan/T. Rex fans, of course; for years most of them have valued the record's blend of basic rock & roll fun ("Is It Love," "One Inch Rock") and more sensitive, at times orchestrally produced pop/rock with lingering traces of his hippie era ("Beltane Walk," "Diamond Meadows"). What they want to know is, what's on the 2004 expanded edition that's worth noting, other than the historical liner notes by Bolan biographer Mark Paytress? That would reside in the nine bonus tracks, highlighted by his first big British hit, "Ride a White Swan" -- and one that set him off on a far harder pop/rock direction and image, though it's not much different from the most electric cuts on T. Rex -- as well as its B-side, a straightforward cover of Eddie Cochran's "Summertime Blues." Less interesting, though good to have in a why-not sort of way, are not-much-different alternate takes of "The Visit" and "Diamond Meadows." Sadly, the packaging doesn't clearly identify what makes the "bonus track" versions of "One Inch Rock," "Seagull Woman," and "The Wizard" different from the ones that appeared on the album, though the "bonus" version of "The Wizard" is certainly missing the opening percussive fanfare of the album rendition. The other two bonus tracks are trifles: a 34-second spoken "Poem" and a similarly brief snippet of "The Children of Rarn," again not marked as to how it's distinguished from the two tracks of that name that open and close the regular T. Rex album. ~ Richie Unterberger|