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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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Teddy Thompson live at Dingwalls, London
The Independent, January 2008
FEW genres of music polarise like country. For some – cloth-eared dullards to a man – country will always be maudlin schlock. Others – those, that is, who are right – recognise the apparent simplicity of the form as a framework from which frequently hangs the finest writing and singing in popular song. Teddy Thompson is clearly one of this latter category. Sadly, judging by the steady drift for the exits which begins quite early in proceedings and gathers pace throughout, quite a lot of his crowd are unbudgeably convinced members of the former.
Thompson’s current album, “Up Front & Down Low”, will likely be recalled, years hence, as a detour on what – there seems no reason not to anticipate – could be a career as a long, varied and interesting as that negotiated by his father, Richard Thompson. “Up Front & Down Low” is – one terrific Thompson original aside – a collection of country covers, mostly well-known to, and well-loved by, anyone whose heart stirs at the lachrymose keen of the pedal steel: Ernest Tubb’s “Walking The Floor Over You”, Liz Anderson’s “(From Now On All My Friends Are Gonna Be) Strangers” (best known as a hit for Merle Haggard), Liz & Casey Anderson’s “The Worst Is Yet To Come” (ditto), Dolly Parton’s “My Blue Tears”, and so forth.
The obvious point of reference is Elvis Costello’s 1981 album “Almost Blue”, another foray into Nashville by a precocious Englishman. However, where Costello unleashed upon his country covers the punky, amphetamined – though nonetheless virtuoso – pugnacity of the formidable Attractions, Thompson takes a more reverent approach. He warms up tonight with a brief solo acoustic set of his own material, then introduces the band – drums, bass, a guitarist/pedal steel player, and the Dirty Pretty Strings, a quartet of (to do no more than confirm the boast of their name) preposterously beautiful women toting violins, viola and cello. What follows is, like the album, pleasant but generally somewhat bloodless and nervous, as evinced by a couple of false starts. In singing these songs, Thompson is working in some mighty shadows – something he of all people should be used to – and he does so with the nervousness of a curator polishing Ming crockery, when the songs could do with seizure by a plunderer less mindful of the consequences: the version of “Strangers” slows Haggard’s wry trundle to a funereal pace, and a swipe at Haggard’s own “I’m Gonna Break Every Heart I Can” (absent from the album) lacks the self-mocking swagger of the original.
When it’s good, though, it’s glorious. Thompson’s conversational voice is a thing of deceptive complexity, an English brogue flecked with hints of a Chris Isaak croon and Dwight Yoakam twang. It’s at its best on his sole contribution to “Up Front. . .”, a beautiful ballad called “Down Low” – also haunted tonight by the backing vocals of Thompson’s sister Kamila – and on the lovely strings-only reading of the Dickey Lee standard “She Thinks I Still Care”, which almost stands comparison with George Jones’ definitive version. Almost.
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