Pitchfork

When I was fifteen years old, I took off one weekend with a carload of guys, all at least ten years older than I was, to catch the very last L.A. Street Scene. In between drinking copious amounts of alcohol and popping Benzedrine caps and Quaaludes, we managed to catch some of the best acts of the 80s for free. What does this have to do with T.Rex? Nothing, really, except that as we were walking around downtown L.A. from the Animotion set to the Sparks set to the L.A. Guns stage, we passed around our requisite boombox and played every song of T.Rex's known to God and man at full volume (all the way to 11) to avoid having to have real conversations with each other. Or at least, that's how it seems now.

This release of Marc Bolan's previously unissued songs both hits and misses. For the most part, the songs are recorded poorly and riddled with tape hiss, which detracts some from Bolan's wonderful voice. There are also a lot of Bolan's ventures into the spiritual side of glam-rock, which can sound deep and meaningful to the listener at one moment while sending the same listener into hysterical giggling fits at another. Still, there are worse collections of Bolan's circulating, and enough good songs here to make buying the disc worthwhile.