Jerk Music Critic: T. Rex, The Slider

Fuzz and haze rule the album and the sound, and that's a-okay with Marc Bolan, because he sliiiides. I mean, it's even on the cover, where the gauzy photograph (allegedly by Ringo Starr, though accounts differ) looked like Bolan stuck a cooking pot on his head until you glance at the back of the gatefold. There are no great lyrics here, because that's not what T. Rex does, and a lot of the music and the melodies are best described as trivial; similarly, the harder moments ("Chariot Choogle," "Buick Mackane" and, well, "Rock On") rock well enough but ultimately come off as slyly sexualized nonsense. Rather, it's those fuzzy, hazy moments that are the best parts of the album: the gentle backing of "Mystic Lady" and the famous title track ("I ain't never never kissed a car before") to start with, but also the languid, floaty "Spaceball Ricochet," the acid blues of "Rabbit Fighter" and the incomprehensibly compelling glam anthem "Ballrooms of Mars." "Metal Guru" is a great lead-off, though "Telegram Sam" gets all the airplay, and while it's good too it's still a recycled riff from "Get It On (Bang A Gong)" which is probably why. It's the slower, smoother moments that reward the listener, and the improved production values compared to Electric Warrior are at least as important. Glam isn't for everyone, but this album is for everyone who likes glam, because for all their faults this was the band that defined it and this is probably the best work they ever did. There are about a billion reissues of this by now: the early Marc on Wax version has the most unreleased new material, and is recommended to T. Rex fans, while the 40th anniversary version pays only lip service to a few and fills up the rest with the usual underwhelming studio outtakes and live performances. (Content: sexual references, adult themes.)

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Express Yourself

The Jerk Music Critic is a collection of amateur music reviews I wrote largely non-professionally between the 1990s and today. Some of these reviews are contemporary and some are retrospective, and a few are rather dated, but all are intended to be free-standing and permanent records of my completely worthless musical opinion. They are presented in no particular order and "new" reviews that occur may actually be simply prior ones I've only now transcribed. Older reviews have been edited to hopefully remove inaccuracies later revealed, as well as add brief content advisories (see "Smash the PMRC") and, where reissues exist with different tracks, brief commentaries on these later additions (the actual star review was not altered).

If you're looking for a specific artist, or just interested to see what I really liked (or really didn't), "When I Break Down" indexes reviews by artist and by number of stars awarded (see "Star Chart" for an explanation).

As we move deeper into the Internet music age where the album format might seem hopelessly antiquated, there is still some artistic value in the LP to those artists who still take advantage of it, and some of these recordings can only be properly appreciated in that context. I hope you enjoy these reviews and recommendations, and don't take them too seriously. — Cameron Kaiser

Star Chart

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An instant classic. Substantially advances/d the state of the art, either technologically, stylistically, or (preferentially) both, and is outstanding music besides. Buy it.

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A excellent album. Nearly every song is a gem; nearly every piece is a winner. Falls short of 5 stars for want of that certain special something, but the difference is in impact, not in musical quality. Buy it.

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Solid. Mostly good songs with a few clinkers. Salvageable with a good playlist. Buy it cheap.

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Mixed. Some good songs stand out, but not enough to make it listenable as a whole. Buy the good songs on iTunes.

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Bad. One or two tracks of even decent quality. Buy the good songs cheap on iTunes.

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How did this get released?

Smash the PMRC

I don't advocate for censorship or unnuanced black and white stickers, but I do advocate for parents being able to raise kids in the way they see fit, which might include introducing albums of controversial yet artistic merit at a point in their child's life when they can better appreciate it. The content summaries are intended to be a very general guide, reflective of only my own personal sensibilities and mine alone, and do not substitute in any way for a parent actually sitting down and listening to the album themselves. If you excessively rely on my content advisories, then I'm the one raising your kid, and you really don't want that.