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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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Liberty Belle & The Black Diamond Express sleevenotes
Circus records, 2004
SYDNEY 1986. Sixth form, Mosman High School. Evenings, when I spent them in, doing homework to JJJ FM. JJJ was a government-funded maverick that sounded like Radio One under the control of art student hijackers. They gave airtime to any local band who could scrape a tape together. They played imported records from Britain and America, so you could hear what you’d read about in your expensive airfreight Melody Maker now, and not in six months when someone got around to releasing it locally. JJJ had disc jockeys who knew and cared about music, personalities who had personalities, investigative programmes that investigated stuff.
There seemed to be another great record by another great local band every week. This, admittedly, is partly due to the fact that I had meandered into the party fairly late where indie music was concerned, and so found almost every taste thrillingly rich and exotic. But it’s also partly due to the fact that there truly was some exceptional music being made by Australians at the time, by The Triffids, Ed Kuepper, Hunters & Collectors, The Church, Hoodoo Gurus, Paul Kelly, and less heralded acts like Ups & Downs, Died Pretty, The Crystal Set, Love Gone Wrong, Tall Tales & True, Chad’s Tree and Not Drowning Waving. I bought all their records, and kept the performances on video when they played on “Rock Arena.” Like most 17-year-olds, I only really existed at school and in whatever imagined scenarios I could find soundtracks for in my record collection, but I nonetheless recall this as as extraordinarily exciting year.
I still remember what I was doing the first time I heard The Go-Betweens. I was teasing my cat instead of doing my economics revision, and JJJ played a song called “Spring Rain”, the single from the new album, “Liberty Belle & The Black Diamond Express.” I could tell you at this point that I underwent a spectacular epiphany, and was convulsed by sobs of ecstasy. What really happened was that I thought it had a cute tune, had grasped from somewhere a dim perception that The Go-Betweens were the sort of band that people who aspired to be cool were supposed to think were cool, and so bought the album the next day from the grey-skinned, purple-haired old woman who ran the record shop at Spit Junction.
Since that afternoon, I doubt that I have ever gone a week without listening to at least some of “Liberty Belle”. I may have loved it at the time because at the time I loved just about everything, but where other purchases I made then now baffle or downright embarrass me, the records of The Go-Betweens in general, and “Liberty Belle” in particular, only grow more precious.
Explaining the appeal of The Go-Betweens to heretics is always difficult. All the avenues that normally lead to the path of enlightenment are, in this case, dead ends. I cannot, for example, make claims on behalf of their musical virtuosity. Neither can I suggest that the band’s songwriters, Robert Forster (tall, dark) and Grant McLennan (short, blond), had great voices. Forster would frequently lapse into a half-spoken, slightly mannered deadpan and leave the melody to its own devices; McLennan made do with an earnest, almost dispassionate mumble.
“Liberty Belle & The Black Diamond Express”, however, had a title that could equally have been coined by Cartland or Peckinpah, and an approach to the absurdities of human relationships that, appropriately, was as hopeless, delightfully romantic as it was savagely, delightfully embittered. Here was a band who knew well what resulted if you held roses too tightly. For every “In the disjointed breaking light/The soft blue approach of the water/Makes a sound you won’t forget” (“The Wrong Road”), there was a “Never thought I’d ever hear from you/My slapped face has healed and so has the misunderstanding” (the immortal opening of “To Reach Me”). “Apology Accepted” was just the finest love song ever written. Even better was "Twin Layers of Lightning”, a bemused reminiscence of two friends on an evening out, stumbling through the streets hand-in-hand with their delusions of grandeur, redeeming their uselessness (“That's just like me/I’d evade waking up if the alarm wouldn’t ring”) with an act of magnificent bravado (“We went into a club/Bouncer’s got no brains/He said both of you are barred/I had to set him straight/Listen, Jack, don’t you know I’M A STAR?"). Not even Morrissey at his archest matched the exquisitely theatrical Forster’s self-mocking panache on this one. “Twin Layers of Lightning” is a three-minute “Withnail & I.”
It would be an exaggeration to report that I actually related to any of this. My connection with “Liberty Belle” at first was strictly aspirational in that I hoped, the way clueless teenagers do, that one day I would be, you know, happening enough to have the kind of friendships that got you into trouble, to meet glamorous and unattainable women who would break my heart into poetically-shaped pieces. I wasn’t an especially complicated adolescent, and “Liberty Belle” functioned for me the way I imagine newspaper reports of far-off imperial wars did for my forebears, inspiring impatience to grapple with the exciting, barely believable hazards and opportunities for heroism reported within.
Since then, I like to think, Ive developed into a reasonably complicated adult, and so appreciate the sorrowful wisdom and sparkling wit of “Liberty Belle” all the more. I have re-enacted “Twin Layers of Lightning” many times, and enjoy few things more. I have played the bewildered narrator of “Head Full Of Steam” (“She plays hard to get along with/But she might drop by. . . To chase her/A fool’s dream") more than once, and liked few things less. “The Wrong Road”, Grant’s epic paean of random regret, resonates more and more as every day that passes marks off a few more things I will never do or see, suggests greater possibilities that might have opened up had I conducted my past differently. “Spring Rain”, the one I heard first, evoking as it still does the supremely beautiful scent of wet asphalt and damp eucalyptus that settles over Sydney after a thunderstorm has sluiced away the smog, is the only song that ever makes me homesick.
“Liberty Belle & The Black Diamond Express” isn’t just my favourite record of all time. Like the song said, it's my favourite work of art (“Funny Valentine”, indeed, might have served as a sub-heading). I’d like more people to hear it, because I’d like to think that everyone can sometimes feel like I do when I do: pleased with the dreams they once harboured, however wrecked or neglected they might have become; simultaneously thrilled and terrified by the knowledge that love will find a way, however well you’ve hidden; comforted by the affirmation that the foolishness we commit in the name of love can be the closest to greatness we get.
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