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 "A gung-ho Candide with a taste for places it is wiser to avoid. . . the reports collected in 'I Wouldn't Start From Here' are graphic, comic, bemused and properly contemptuous of faith and ideology."
- Jonathan Meades, Books of the Year, Evening Standard
"An utterly sui generis report from the world's plague-spots."
- Michael Bywater, Books of the Year, New Statesman
"I can think of no more entertaining companion on a perilous journey than the ever hopeful, wildly optimistic yet clear-thinking Andrew Mueller."
- Rory MacLean, The Guardian
"A tour-de-force of hilarious, harrowing and ultimately enlightening reportage that will remind readers of the work of P.J. O'Rourke, Jon Ronson and David Foster Wallace."
- The Washington Times
"Unafraid to portray the world's warring people not just as victims and sufferers of legitimate grievances, but also as bloody-minded bastards and ill-informed fools."
- The Kathmandu Post
"A mix of dark humour and incisive political discourse."
- CNN Go
"His sardonic, self-deprecating perspective makes for unstuffy company."
- The Los Angeles Times
"Peppered with trenchant observations that reflect a nimble, cut-to-the-chase practicality, Mueller's interviews with everyone from terrorist warlords to international peacemakers are refreshingly irreverent yet astute."
- Booklist
"Travel writing in the danger zone that maintains its hipness and humanity."
- George Dunford, Books of the Year, Readings Monthly
"An addition to the genre founded by P.J. O'Rourke's 'Holidays In Hell', but it is one that pushes the boundaries."
- The Australian
"Mueller is the embodiment of what can happen with a fire in the belly and a desire to write out loud."
- Australian Book Review
"Mueller's travel writing is as incisive and entertaining as anything he's ever written about music."
- TNT
"A joy."
- Financial Times
"Delightfully laconic."
- The New Statesman
"Alternately chilling, funny and surprising, there's some great reportage here as Mueller struggles to reach an understanding of the world, quizzing the highest minister and the lowliest peasant."
- The Glasgow Herald
"His acerbic wit is matched by true empathy. . . we need this kind of gonzo journalism more than ever."
- Wanderlust
"Mueller spins what could have been the grimmest geopolitics into the finest black comedy. Like a print version of 'The Daily Show'."
- FHM
"Lively reporting from a gently humorous narrator."
- Chris Ayres, The Times
"Touching, often blackly comic reportage."
- GQ
"Brilliantly observed, articulate, often funny and immensely readable."
- The List
"Snappy, self-deprecating and sometimes outright hilarious."
- The Age
"Indelibly humorous and heartfelt."
- Sydney Sunday Telegraph
"An instructive ricochet between cities and continents and war zones."
- Time Out
"He brings to his material the mixture of rage and earthy irony that is the mark of a great satirist
. . . rewarding, thought-provoking and ludicrously funny."
- PopMatters
"Mueller's book is an excellent example of why today's brave, lucid hacks are forced to admit fear and confusion."
- South China Morning Post
"His reporting is sharp, his experiences terrifying and funny."
- Melbourne Herald-Sun
"If you enjoy your international affairs and politics with a good dose of cynicism and black humour, then this book is one to read."
- Brisbane Courier-Mail
"Often laugh-out-loud funny, the writing is utterly engaging."
- Launceston Sunday Examiner
"Mueller's irreverent reportage from abroad is fundamentally a clever cover for the author's ruminations on race, religion, revolution, rock'n'roll and other important issues since September 11, 2001."
- The West Australian
"As hilarious and sardonic a host as this ridiculous world of ours demands."
- Shortlist
"Mueller busies himself with finding the odd, the surreal and the laughable as much as the shocking and upsetting."
- New Zealand Herald
"A real eye for surreal moments of black humour. . . Mueller's work here digs much deeper than the standard newspaper travel essay."
- Sydney Sun-Herald
"His best story, about his brief, bizarre jailing in Cameroon, reads like a 21st century 'Goon Show' script."
- Good Reading
"A rollicking ride through some of the world's scariest scenarios."
- Kalgoorlie Miner
"A strikingly funny book about some seriously unfunny places."
- Perth Sunday Times
"Not bad for a guy from Wagga Wagga."
- The Wagga Wagga Advertiser
 "Andrew Mueller's piece about my band's tour with The Hold Steady is my favourite thing ever written about us. The fact that he is a war correspondent (though he claims otherwise) and music journalist and
approaches both with a similar slant makes him one of the most interesting
writers out there to me."
- Patterson Hood, Drive-By Truckers
"The most important critical anthology on popular music from a single author in a long time, its humour and insight equal with collections by Nick Tosches or Robert Palmer."
- KEXP Seattle
"Take one part P.J. O'Rourke, a healthy dose of Lester Bangs and a dash of Hunter S. Thompson, and you've got Andrew Mueller."
- Bookgasm
"Sharply observed and wittily constructed."
- Honolulu Star-Advertiser
"New edition of the rock classic."
- NY Press
"Mueller's humour makes for some enlightening reading."
- Biloxi-Gulfport Sun-Herald
"Sharp, witty and sarcastic."
- Chicago Tribune
 "Really rather good, in a barnstorming, country-punk sort of way. . . a highly capable ensemble."
- The Quietus
"A more than capable debut - allusive country-tough songs."
- Uncut
"The Blazing Zoos are undoubtedly fun, but they also have depth. . .
everything from Mueller's extensive use of brackets to the band's loving
recreation of classic country riffs bespeaks sincerity."
- Americana UK
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Paul Westerberg interview
The Independent, April 1999
IT is commonly held that the spiritual base of modern American rock’n’roll is Seattle, the rainy north-western city that hosted the grunge renaissance of the early 90s. The unlikely truth, however, might be that the real heart of American music is Minneapolis, a medium-sized, nondescript city that seems to be comprised pretty well entirely of high-rise car parks. Without the influence of two bands that blossomed here in the 1980s, grunge and all that went with it would never have happened. A group called Hüsker Dü patented the sound - the souped-up electric guitar that sounded like an angrily revving bomber. Another group, The Replacements, invented the attitude - the integrity, commitment and long-term career sense of a kamikaze squadron.
“Oh, probably,” says Paul Westerberg, and fidgets with his coffee cup. Westerberg, a quiet and modest man who somehow gives the impression of being shorter than he actually is, was The Replacements’ singer and songwriter. “It was the irony of someone who is basically shy and elusive choosing a career that involves becoming a public figure. I was sure from the beginning that it was something I didn’t want to cultivate. It’s funny. . . there are people, like Greta Garbo, or Leonard Cohen, who become famous for not showing up, and that’s something to cultivate, if it suits your lifestyle, and it does mine. I sit at home, do my work, play with my little boy, do what I prefer to do, and it seems to enhance this supposed image. . . the reclusive elder statesman. Fine.”
Not for the first or last time, Westerberg is trying to explain to someone who thinks The Replacements were one of the greatest bands who ever existed and that Westerberg is one of the finest songwriters alive why he isn’t rich, famous, or at least regularly bracketed alongside the likes of Bob Dylan, Brian Wilson and Jimmy Webb. We’re talking about Westerberg’s third solo album, “Suicaine Gratifaction”, which is as good a record as he’s made, which is as high as praise gets.
“Thanks,” he says, at once clearly genuine and uncomfortable. “I appreciate that.”
Such was the commercial and critical disrepair into which Westerberg’s career had degenerated at one point that “Suicaine Gratifaction” - the title is symptomatic both of Westerberg’s dyslexia and restless linguistic playfulness - was nearly never made at all. After exhaustively touring his second solo album, 1996’s “Eventually” - a fierce, intelligent and shockingly under-rated record even by Westerberg’s standards - he suffered what he describes this afternoon as a full-scale breakdown.
“In a way,” he says, “‘Eventually’ was precursor to the breakdown. On this record, it’s already here, so it’s a question of whether I go the next step - kill myself, withdraw from music, or keep my wits together and work, which means write, even if it’s about death and suicide. But, you know, I’m still alive, I’m still going. So it couldn’t have got too bad.”
Westerberg mutters all this with the same deadpan self-mockery that has informed many of his best songs over the years, but there’s no doubt that he’s hauled “Suicaine Gratifaction” up from forbidding depths - spiritually and literally. The album was written and mostly recorded in Westerberg’s basement, and producer Don Was, to his eternal credit, seems hardly to have produced the songs at all. The result is that the upbeat numbers rock with a ferocity comparable with anything The Replacements managed, and the ballads - the gorgeous, wracked confessionals that Westerberg glibly dismisses as his “I’m-not-a-tough-guy songs” - sound like what they are: the lonely, late-night musings of a man approaching 40 and wondering if it’s a mark worth passing.
“That did fuel the urgency of these songs,” he agrees. “I’m 39, and I don’t have a skill. This is what I do, and if nobody wants it, I’m in trouble. I could go back to sweeping floors, I guess.”
Westerberg is pleased by the suggestion that his new record has a certain redemptive optimism, even if it is only in the sense of looking up from as low a point as a person can reach. He shares his chocolate-chip cookie and says he likes spending his days at home, wandering the house with his guitar around his neck and his 10-month-old son, Johnny-Paul, strapped to his back. He wants his new record “to sell as many as it can while doing as little as possible”, and refuses to begrudge anything of Green Day, Goo Goo Dolls or any of the dozens of other bands who have reworked the template provided by The Replacements into licenses to print money. He laughingly denies that the song on the new album with the chorus that goes “I was the last thing you ever wanted and the best thing you never had” is directed towards the record-buying public, and is kind enough to patiently deconstruct a few of his visitor’s favourite Replacements songs, when he can remember what he was getting at when he wrote them. He finally asks to leave the cafe because he thinks the staff have recognised him and might put on one of his old records.
“There’s a picture a lot of people paint that they want me to agree with,” he says, “but I can’t saddle up to the notion that I’m bitter and it should have been me. I’m glad it wasn’t me. I’m glad I don’t have to be one thing forever.”
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