Search - Honor Among Thieves :: The Blue God

Little Molecues of Mueller

A. Reid | Washington DC USA | 10/05/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This CD caught my eye on the P.S. Mueller home-page. I was curious how he would work out as a lyricist, since the actual words on the cartoons tend to be few, though always well-chosen, and frequently hilarious. The result is really quite good, and every bit as surreal as you might expect. I did find that the available sample track ("Little Molecules") was not as representative of the album as a whole as I might have liked -- it remains my favorite, whether because I heard it first or because it's actually better I don't know -- but the other tracks are also quite good. To my ear, the sound is very much like early Leonard Cohen, or maybe some of the less percussive Tom Waits, with the nice buzzy overdriven amplifiers giving it a good, gritty garage-band kind of feel. The Blue God departs from both of these guys in that it has very different subject matter, and the final track, "The Blue God", actually takes on something of a narrative arc, which was a surprise. Mueller is definitely in some other head-space than most people, as any fan of his cartoons must know, but he's clearly not trapped in cartoon-land, and has given us a nice bit of bonus surreality to chew on."