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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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Randy Newman live
The Independent, February 2004
IF one song could be said to be responsible for the current, and long overdue, mini-renaissance that Randy Newman is enjoying, it is “Political Science”. When it first appeared, on Newman’s 1972 album, “Sail Away”, it must have sounded a mildly amusing slice of Tom Lehrer-style apocalyptic whimsy. In the last couple of years, it has sounded more like an eerily prescient insight into the mind of Donald Rumsfeld (who, back when Newman wrote the song, was a Counsellor to Richard Nixon). “Political Science” is the one that contemplates the opprobrium directed at America by the rest of the world (“No one likes us, I don’t know why/We might not be perfect, but heaven knows we try”) before recommending a monumental nuclear onslaught on the whole ungrateful planet (“They all hate us anyhow, so let’s drop the big one now”). When Newman plays it tonight, just before the interval, it’s hard to tell whether the audience’s laughter is appreciative or nervous.
Newman, and his unusually fervent fanbase, have long since settled into the idea that he is essentially a prophet without honour in his own time. He’s written hits for other artists (Judy Collins, Tom Jones, Three Dog Night, The Walker Brothers) and many Oscar-nominated film scores, but has been kept from mainstream acceptance by a combination of his appearance – now 60, he resembles an especially despondent philosophy lecturer – and his intelligence. The great joy of Newman’s songs is that his cutting edge is so keen that it is not always immediately apparent who is being targeted – whether listener, subject, Newman himself, none would necessarily know anything had hit them until they noticed, much later, that their shoes were full of blood. “Rednecks”, delivered tonight with savage relish after a hilarious monologue about the song’s origins, could well be a straightforward mockery of the song’s bigoted narrator; it could just as easily be a satire of liberal attitudes to American southerners.
Newman’s current tour is in support of a new album – “The Randy Newman Songbook Vol. 1” – which isn’t quite a live recording and not really a greatest hits collection. Like the shows on the tour, it’s an exercise in reducing Newman’s fabulous songs to their fundamentals – Newman’s lively, impish piano-playing and sour growl of a voice. Alone beneath a spotlight at a vast black grand piano, Newman proves to be, unsurprisingly, his own most perceptive critic. Introducing “The Great Nations Of Europe” tonight, he remarks that he’s always felt that his forte is the big themes. This song, he says, accurately, is “The last 400 years of western civilisation in two minutes 48 seconds”. Later, “The World Isn’t Fair” uses his observation of the pretty young wives of “froggish” older men like himself to debunk Marxism. Or, possibly, to endorse it. As ever where Newman is concerned, it can be hard to tell how much of his characteristic sarcasm is a double-bluff. After such a tour-de-force as tonight, though, it hardly matters.
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