Messing with the Mystic (Unissued Songs 1972-1977)

AMG Review of Messing with the Mystic (Unissued Songs 1972-1977)

Stephen Thomas Erlewine
All Music Guide

At the outset of their exhaustive, multi-volume trek through Marc Bolan and T. Rex's unreleased recordings, Demon released Messing With the Mystic (Unissued Songs 1972-1977), a single-disc, 24-track overview of what would turn out to be their endless Unchained and Alternate Album series. Since each volume of Unchained was unnecessarily padded with incompleted demos, guitar solos, almost-realized ideas, and non-ideas, an overview of the highlights is a good concept. Messing With the Mystic does its job admirably, capturing all of the best moments from those discs, including "Children of the World," "Down Home Lady," "Foxy Boy," "Endless Sleep" and the immortally titled "Reelin' An' a Rockin' An' a Boppin' An' a Bolan." Even though these are the best moments of the unreleased discs, keep in mind that these are still outtakes from a man with a notoriously inconsistent body of work -- they aren't necessarily killer, they're just the best of the leftovers. Which means that this is for dedicated fans, not fans who aren't obsessed; the truly obsessive would be better off investing in the full Unchained and Alternate series.