258. T. Rex - The Slider (1972)
















Track Listing

1. Metal Guru
2. Mystic Lady
3. Rock On
4. Slider
5. Baby Boomerang
6. Spaceball Ricochet
7. Buick Mackane
8. Telegram Sam
9. Rabbit Fighter
10. Baby Strange
11. Ballrooms Of Mars
12. Chariot Choogle
13. Main Man

Review

Finally a normal sized album, getting a bit overwhelmed by all the double and triple albums on the list. T. Rex are back, and what a dandy thing that is too. The Slider is the follow up to Electric Warrior which recently got a perfect 10 here.. Slider will not get that however, not because it is in anyway bad, which it isn't, but it just goes to show that Bolan has basically found a formula that he's exploiting here.

The formula is of course great, and saying that The Slider is more of the same is a bit unfair.... and even if it was more of the same it would be more of the same of a great album. The Slider rocks much harder than Electric Warrior, however, but it lacks the sweetness of some songs in the previous album, it is just going more for a heavier sound. The starting track Metal Guru tells you what to expect, still it has pretty much the same feeling as Warrior, and a spirit of "if it isn't broke don't fix it".

At times Bolan is just doing Zeppelin meets T. Rex, again there's nothing wrong with that as I love both bands, but it brings a level of derivativeness which was unecessary to the album. I might be sounding a bit to mean for what is actually a great album with no boring tracks or skippable ones at that, but I am only being like this because I love T.Rex, still if you ever only get two albums of T.Rex this is the second one to get. So get it at Amazon UK or US.

Track Highlights

1. Baby Strange
2. Telegram Sam
3. Metal Guru
4. Ballrooms of Mars

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

It became T. Rex's most popular album in the United States, reaching #17, featuring the singles "Telegram Sam" and "Metal Guru", though neither of these became hits in the U.S ("Telegram Sam" only scraped to #67 and "Metal Guru" didn't chart). The much-parodied iconic cover was #37 in Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 100 greatest album covers.

The Slider came on the heels of the success of Electric Warrior, and many said that timing probably helped The Slider's own success. The virtues of Electric Warrior were all there, but most agreed it had a very different style.

Baby Strange: