[1] They had yet to break through into the mainstream, but at this point singer-songwriter Marc Bolan seemed steadfastly determined to remain an unrepentant hippie playing all-acoustic psychedelic folk music, even as the fashion appeared to be slowly fading.

Like the previous Tyrannosaurus Rex album, Unicorn was recorded at London's Trident Studios with producer Tony Visconti and engineer Malcolm Toft over a period of several months in between live dates.

Marc claimed in a contemporary interview that the album was in two parts: six songs featuring just guitar and bongos like the duo's previous records, with the rest aiming for a uniquely all-acoustic, Spectoresque "wall of sound" approach utilizing overdubs of dozens of instruments, including over 20 different kinds of percussion.

[2] The lyrical content of the songs continued to be heavily influenced by a Romantic sensibility (as in the works of Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley and Byron) coupled with Tolkien-esque fantasy imagery, as displayed in The Warlock of Love, Bolan's first book of poetry printed just prior to the release of Unicorn.

[3] As with his poetry, the words to songs on the album are difficult to decipher directly, being dependent on fantastic, dreamlike imagery such as "the toad road licked my wheel like a sabre" or "darkly ghostist host, haggard vizier of the moats."

"Catblack (The Wizard's Hat)" originally stemmed from a fall 1966 demo with different lyrics, with chords mirroring oldies records like "Runaround Sue"; Bolan also claimed the piano part was brought in to further appeal to rock'n'roll fans.

Nick Logan of New Musical Express called it "a happy warming sound, absorbing, refreshing and stimulating"[1] while Melody Maker declared it their most interesting to date, singling out "Catblack (The Wizard's Hat)" as "one of the best tunes that Marc has written".

[7] Julian Cope's site Head Heritage noted "the interweaving vocal shrieks, screams and yelps of both Bolan and Took merging seamlessly, whilst simultaneously creating meaning from incompressible improvisations and almost mystical religion chants.