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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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Go-Betweens interview
The Independent, September 2000
“I ALWAYS thought we would record again,” says Robert Forster. “I always thought it was only a matter of time.”
In a remotely civilised world, the news that The Go-Betweens are shortly to release their first album in nearly 12 years would be the prompt for street parties, fireworks, fly-pasts, and combatant armies emerging from their trenches for impromptu kickabouts in no-man’s land. Between 1981 and 1988, the Brisbane band filled six albums with Robert Forster and Grant McLennan’s exquisitely tuneful, lyrically opulent love songs. The overwhelming majority of the record-buying public deemed these masterpieces surplus to their requirements, but they bit a significant minority hard enough to turn The Go-Betweens into a cause. For the band’s fans, a disproportionate number of whom seemed to write about music for a living, appreciation of The Go-Betweens always seemed to go hand in hand with a seething, righteous outrage that nobody bought their records.
“No, I’m not surprised,” shrugs McLennan, asked if the fervour of the critical crusade ever took him aback. “I hope that doesn’t sound too egotistical, but I do think most of the songs on the records are worthy of that sort of appreciation. Also, we didn’t go on to embarrass ourselves, or shit all over our canon – the songs that Robert and I have written since, for our solo albums, have included some really good ones. So I’m not surprised, no.”
Forster and McLennan are sitting in the garden of a West London restaurant, looking as ever like some louche, absinthe-addled aristocrat (Forster) taking the Grand Tour in the company of his earnest, dependable valet (McLennan). This afternoon, they are exuding an easygoing optimism that has not always characterised their post-Go-Betweens interviews. This is probably attributable to a number of factors: the sun is out, they no longer have to struggle to deflect the interest of Go-Betweens-obsessed interviewers toward their solo records, they are attracting a gratifying degree of press interest. Most importantly, they know how good the belated addition to the Go-Betweens catalogue is. It is called “The Friends Of Rachel Worth”, and only a sensationally profligate fool would bet on a better album being released this year (Rachel Worth herself doesn’t exist, as such, although Forster is currently debating the wisdom of confecting a life for her in future interviews).
Forster and McLennan are the only two founder members still trading under the Go-Betweens name. The band’s break-up in 1989 was as acrimonious as its internal politics were fractious – on-again, off-again romantic relationships among the band members ensured that neither Forster or McLennan ever had to look too far afield for inspiration for their songs – but, crucially, the pair of songwriters never fell out or lost touch with each other, even after Forster moved to Germany, where he still lives. Throughout the 90s, as Forster and McLennan pursued fitfully excellent solo careers, they would occasionally play acoustic shows together under the name of their old band, and they also collaborated on a film script (“It’s in turnaround, right now,” deadpans McLennan. “I think it’s under Michael Douglas’s bed,” suggests Forster).
“And in May 1999,” says McLennan, filling in the gaps, “we were doing a tour of ten dates in Australia. We hadn’t played those songs together in Australia since the last Go-Betweens tour in 1989, and seeing how much the audiences cared for those songs, and feeling the stuff in the room. . . it felt right. And that’s when I opened my big mouth.”
Forster didn’t take much convincing. As the pair proceeded on a world tour, they examined various options for places to record in and people to record with. A procession of happenstances led them to a 16-track studio in Portland, Oregon, with Olympia-based riot grrl noiseniks Sleater-Kinney falling in as a backing band. The album they emerged with seems to have surprised both its creators with its effortless, unforced resemblance to something immediately recognisable as a Go-Betweens album.
“It slots in with the others beautifully, I think,” beams McLennan.
“I agree,” nods Forster, as if he as arrived at this verdict after exhaustive deliberation. “The sound and the attitude, I think, are really great. It doesn’t sound like session musicians made it. We didn’t play the demos to anybody before we recorded it, and all the deals we’ve signed for it are with friends, basically.” (This is true – the press officer at their American label, Jetset, is Robert Vickers, who played bass on three Go-Betweens albums).
What does set “The Friends Of Rachel Worth” apart from its predecessors is that, in the decade-plus since they last recorded together, Forster and McLennan have grown stylistically apart as songwriters. There was always a contrast between them that wasn’t just down to them singing their own creations – most of the Go-Betweens’ singles were McLennan’s more accessible and immediate efforts – but the roles are now much more defined. Grant writes the lyrically direct, melodically irresistible hits-in-waiting (the next single, “Going Blind”, could have been something Paul Simon had written for The Monkees), while Robert is furthering his fondness for magnificently self-mythologising monologues laden with mournful irony (both “German Farmhouse” and “He Lives My Life” from the new record stand comparison with Leonard Cohen at his best). The styles remain weirdly complementary, though – which is possibly why, since The Go-Betweens split, there has been a ritual among in-denial fans whereby they would choose their favourite five songs from each of Robert and Grant’s most recent solo album, put them on a cassette, and pretend.
“I have heard that,” laughs Robert. “And I find that just fantastic. I think it’s absolutely wonderful. We heard today of some people who’d gone to Brisbane from Leeds, just to see where we came from. I think the Brisbane tourist industry is really going to have to get in on this. Guided tours. Statues. At least.”
Which is where we came in, with the question of what it was about this chronically commercially hapless group (“We have no money at all,” confirms Forster) that inspired, and continues to inspire, a devotion verging on the kamikaze.
“I think the fact that we had no hits, in a weird way, gave us a lot of freedom,” suggests Forster. “Our records weren’t pinned to a time, and I guess that’s why people feel they’re something they can continue to live with.”
“I think if they’d been more successful, we would have become a different band,” says McLennan, “and maybe we wouldn’t have got to hang out with people who weren’t so interesting, weren’t so cool, and weren’t so. . . like us. A lot of people who like our music seem to be people who take risks, or think of new things, and I’d rather spend time with people like that.”
Most happily of all, the riskiest question of all for any time-served Go-Betweens fans who still can’t believe their luck is answered, for today at least, in an exhilarated affirmative.
“I feel that this record is so good,” says McLennan, “and that it’s so good to be working with Robert again, that there are big things up ahead, let’s say. . . more risks, more Go-Betweens records, yeah, I think so.”
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