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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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A BLOOM WITH A VIEW
Prefab Sprout interview
The Independent, May 2001
PADDY McAloon sits in a brightly-lit, rather overwhelmingly modern, Newcastle restaurant, sipping on a lime and soda. He is dressed in white, and is studying a second-hand biography of some or other early-twentieth century classical composer through the lens of an immense and ornate magnifying glass. The spectacular beard he took on tour last year has been trimmed, but he nevertheless looks the perfect picture of the grandly eccentric elder, and this seems proper; Prefab Sprout’s imminent, and altogether gorgeous, seventh album, “The Gunman & Other Stories” is the Tyneside group’s second since 1990, reinforcing the image of McAloon as a mystical figure who descends infrequently from the rarefied heights his muse occupies, modestly releases another record which shows everyone else how it should be done, if only they would listen, and then vanishes from view.
“I’ve just had an odd four years,” he says, when asked what he’s been up to since the release of 1997’s criminally overlooked “Andromeda Heights” – a work, incidentally, of unassailable melodic genius and vivacious lyrical optimism that should be issued to every child at birth to serve as a permanent reminder of humanity’s nobler possibilities. “I hit forty, got married [to Prefab Sprout backing vocalist Wendy Smith], had two children and three eye operations.”
It’s the latter that explains the magnifying glass. McAloon, 43, has acquired the old man’s ailment of recurring retinal detachment. The traumas of the last incidence, a couple of months ago (“Painful? I thought the surgeon had left his scalpel in there”) are discomfitingly visible in his left eye.
“The guy who was wheeling me in for the operation asked me what I did, and I told him, and he said ‘Oh, I don’t like Prefab Sprout’. . . and I’m thinking, great, you know, he’ll probably be the last person I ever speak to.”
Over a lengthy lunch, McAloon is excellent company, spirited and funny, if easily tempted into pursuing tangents over great and exhausting distance. He seems genuinely perplexed by, and curious about, characterisations of “The Gunman. . .” as Prefab Sprout’s country album.
“You think it is? Really?”
Really. Recorded in the New York state home studio of one-time David Bowie and T-Rex producer Tony Visconti, “The Gunman. . .”, although a recognisably ornate and polished Prefab Sprout album, is built on country structures, haunted by lap steel guitar and massed strings, full of songs that could (and should) be sung by George Jones and Glen Campbell, contains a typically sumptuous version of the western standard “Streets Of Laredo”, and is riddled with the sort of lyrical twists beloved of Merle Haggard (“When you get to know me better,” laments one chorus, “you’ll learn to love me less.”)
“I don’t even like those sort of titles,” McAloon laughs. “They’re punchlines. They’re cute, and they can set the tone for the whole song, but as a stylistic trick, I think it’s a bit easy. I feel a bit of a fraud being questioned about this, because I actually know very little country music.”
This seems an extraordinary statement. McAloon’s songs have always been suffused with a wide-eyed love of American pop culture and a profound appreciation of America’s mythology: he named a song after 60s country icon Faron Young as long ago as 1985’s immortal “Steve McQueen” album, and included two songs inspired by legendary gunslinger Jesse James on 1990’s “Jordan: The Comeback” – which, in turn, was besotted throughout with Elvis Presley.
“Someone asked me last week whether these songs were pastiche,” he says, “because, when I wrote them, I had a job to do.”
Five of the songs on “The Gunman. . .” were written for Jimmy Nail, who prevailed upon McAloon for the soundtrack for his “Crocodile Shoes” series. A sixth, the title track, was written for Cher (“I’m told she liked her own singing on it, but she didn’t get it.”) A seventh, “Wild Card In The Pack”, was written with Kenny Rogers in mind, but never sent to him.
“And I thought,” he continues, “that was a bit of a harsh term. I mean, in a sense it is pastiche, because I’m relying on my memories of what country music is, as vague as they may be – but there’s a general stylistic sense of what country is that allows you to write them. But I was really into it.”
McAloon’s exuberant passion for songwriting more than makes up for his professed lack of knowledge of this genre; like those rare sporting prodigies who can master a new discipline as easily as they lift a tennis racket, cricket bat or croquet mallet, McAloon has a preposterously easy facility with all varieties of song. Despite his sporadic output over the last decade, he writes prolifically. Rumours exist of dozens of lost Prefab Sprout albums.
“They’re not lost,” he claims. “They’re written, but they’re not recorded. There must be at least twelve. They’re on different themes, some of which have more commercial potential than others.”
The albums that McAloon confirms the existence of include a suite dedicated to Michael Jackson (“It’s called ‘Behind The Veil’, and it consists of songs in the style of ‘Thriller’, with titles like ‘Mr Lightning Boots’”), a Phil Spector tribute album, a musical history of the world called “Earth: The Story So Far”, a spoken-word reminiscence from the perspective of a fictional woman, called “I Trawl The Megahertz”, and a collection of novelty songs (“The Gunman. . .” closes on a piece of hyperactive electro-country whimsy called “Farmyard Cat”, which McAloon included “because it was joyful, and you don’t hear that often”).
That public money continues to be squandered on such fripperies as schools, roads, hospitals and national defence while McAloon’s unheard library of imagined masterpieces goes unrecorded is, frankly, an outrage. McAloon, for his part, while equally aware and relieved that his days as a mainstream pop star are behind him (“I was much too nervous of how high things might go”), remains properly convinced of his own worth. He was, he admits, “terribly, bitterly disappointed” at the commercial no-show of “Andromeda Heights”. He sounds determined not to get his hopes up for “The
Gunman. . .”.
“No, I’ve given up,” he laughs, again. “In my bitter pride, I just think, bore them with greatness. That’s my new motto.”
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