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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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RHYMES AGAINST HUMANITY
Dolores O'Riordan, considered
The Guardian, April 2007
ANYBODY who has ever said something is “so bad, it’s, like, rilly good,” is a simpering dimwit who probably punctuates their emails with “lol” and “OMG”. Things that are bad are bad. To suggest otherwise is to mortgage your soul to the hollow comfort of irony.
However, there are cases, the more treasurable for their rarity, that someone does something so badly that their hapless labours become curiously life-affirming. The maladroit doggerel of 19th century Scottish poet William MacGonagall delights today. Future generations may weep similar gleeful, incredulous tears at the columns of Amanda Platell. It is with this purehearted appreciation of hubris that one greets “Are You Listening?”, the solo debut of former Cranberries vocalist Dolores O’Riordan. Where most rock lyricists are merely prosaic, she is prolifically, consistently, magnificently atrocious. In The Cranberries’ “Bosnia”, she rhymed “Bosnia was so unkind” with “Sarajevo changed my mind”. “I Just Shot John Lennon” opened with the eerily McGonagallesque couplet “It was the fearful night of December 8th/He was returning home from the studio late.” A new O’Riordan collection should be anticipated with the same morbid excitement that presently attends every deployment of England’s football team.
The title is a fine start: “Are You Listening?” is splendidly charmless. (What others, one trembles to wonder, were considered? “Is Someone Chewing?”? “It’s Your Own Time You’re Wasting”?) Sadly, the tracklisting contains little that arouses as instantly, an uninspiring array of cookie-cutter cliche: “Ordinary Day”, “Apple Of My Eye”, “In The Garden”. Even more regrettably, if the words circulating online are genuine – and who would dare invent an O’Riordan verse? – she has largely retreated from the astonishing, unbound ineptitude that made the lyric sheets of The Cranberries’ 1996 disaster “To The Faithful Departed” and 1999 catastrophe “Bury The Hatchet” such fun, and become merely tedious. Nowhere does she approach the breathless flights of gaucherie that distinguished, for example, the unforgettable opening of “Animal Instinct”: “Suddenly something has happened to me/As I was having my cup of tea.” O’Riordan’s excruciating best may be behind her.
The real tragedy is that O’Riordan could have brought joy to many for nobler reasons. Though – on the evidence of the single, “Ordinary Day” – she remains determined to project her toe-curling words with a wince-inducing corncrake squawk, her voice presumably still secretes the fragile beauty that adorned The Cranberries’ “Linger” (which contained several duff rhymes, but was naive enough to be charming). Even her much-mocked early foray into seriousness, 1994’s “Zombie”, with its TANKS and its BOMBS and its BOMBS and its GUNS, wasn’t entirely appalling. It articulated the feelings of most Irish people towards Northern Ireland – ie, knock it off, the lot of you – and displayed rudimentary historical understanding, making reasonably graceful reference to the Easter Rising.
Where did it go wrong? It’s too late to answer that with anything beyond a merry whoop of “Who cares?” The real question is why no forward-thinking mischief-maker commissioned O’Riordan to compose a concept album about the War on Terror: “’Twas in the fateful spring of 2003/That the minarets of Baghdad with binoculars the US army’s 3rd Infantry Division could see. . .”
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