In the spring of 1973, Marc Bolan was dissatisfied with what he perceived as an insufficient reception to the single "20th Century Boy" (which reached the UK number 3 position that March) and eager to further explore the musical directions glimpsed on the just-released Tanx LP.

[5] The initial session at Rosenberg Studios on March 20, 1973, saw rough early versions of "Liquid Gang", "Superbad" (a working title for "The Avengers"), "The Groover", its B-side "Midnight" and two outtakes, "All My Love" and "Down Home Lady" committed to tape.

[5] Mixing and overdubbing was held at AIR back in London on May 6–7, then moved to Apple Studios on May 11 for working versions of "Squint Eye Mangle" (released with "Blackjack" later in the year as a single by "Big Carrot") and another outtake, "Mr. Motion".

[6] By November, at the conclusion of an extensive Far East tour, drummer Bill Legend also quit, noting "I always gave him my best but it wouldn't have taken much for him to give us the occasional word of encouragement...he tended to take everyone for granted".

Journalist Alexis Petridis wrote that the album features a variety of styles including "the funky clavinet, the Jerry Lee Lewis piano, the backing vocals of his new partner Gloria Jones, the strings, the horns and the trebly, distorted guitar on which Bolan would fire off extravagant, Hendrixesque solos.

[8] The original title of the album was A Creamed Cage in August with the artist name to be Zinc Alloy and the Hidden Riders of Tomorrow, which at the time he insisted was a send-up of the two Stardusts, Ziggy and Alvin.

[3] The British press slammed T. Rex for copying the title of the album from Bowie's The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, even though Bolan had spoken of releasing work under the pseudonym "Zinc Alloy" during the mid-1960s.

One of the few exceptions was Chris Welch at Melody Maker, who opined "there's a lot more life, guts and twists of the unexpected here than on many a more serious work" before going on to praise "Venus Loon", "Sound Pit", and "The Leopards".

[5] On the other hand, Steve Peacock of Sounds drolly stated "my idea of purgatory would be to be marooned on a desert island with a gramophone and copy of this album" while Andrew Tyler of NME groaned that "Bolan has conjured up a series of ponderous titles that he uses as a vehicle to project his inane curly-haired stud image...the whole thing puts you in mind of a half-cocked production-line band content at one stab of glory.

[8] In a review rated 7 out of 10, Uncut wrote: "Bolan, newly enchanted with singer Gloria Jones, gives fuller vent to funk and R&B influences, predating by several months Bowie’s and Elton John’s interest in disco and Philly soul."

[13] The Quietus praised most of the songs, saying: "'Venus Loon' and 'Sound Pit' are startling, fantastic openers, bustling with heavy-hitting proto-disco grooves and the kind of dramatic string-stabs more akin to the Chi-Lites or O'Jays than the purely rock & roll influences of yore.

Even when he does step back to the boogie of 'Explosive Mouth' there's an almost Beefheartian oddity to the grooves and shapes, a committed surrealism to the lyrics, an honesty about his own self-delusion and the destructiveness of his fantasism that imply far more self-awareness than the official story of Bolan's demise allows."

"'Liquid Gang', 'Carsmile Smith' and 'Painless Persuasion' are some of the most gloriously over-the-edge anthems he ever wrote, and when the band gets funky ('You've Got To Jive', 'Interstellar Soul' and 'The Avengers') they manage to be more lethally in the pocket than any of the other white rockers then trying to tap a little of James Brown's ancient-futurist magic (e.g.

Reviewer Alexis Petridis qualified "Teenage Dream" as "floridly elegiac" "and sufficiently ahead of the curve to start experimenting with soul music 18 months before Bowie released Young Americans".