Pete Muller-More Than This

Artist: Pete Muller
Title: More Than This
Genre: Rock-Pop-Folk-Jazz
Label: Dog and Hammock Productions

Pete Muller is a musical sage for a modern world. He carries a five-pound keyboard on hiking and kayaking trips to the Himalayas, Ecuador, and New Zealand, to name a few out of the way places. How many keyboard players do you know go to those lengths to play and be one with their music? And that is exactly what this artist does. His piano and voice are separate instruments, yet become one affecting musical poem on a new album titled More Than This.

Muller’s musical influences are as varied as his traveling habits. His inspirations are people like Van Morrison, Cat Stevens, Shawn Colvin, Richard Shindell, Keith Jarrett, and McCoy Tyner. It is easy to see how an across-the-board taste will pop up in his music everywhere. Each track is injected with organic homegrown bursts of energetic pop, jazz, rock and folk, and I heard even a little country and gospel influence now and then.

Muller is a folk hero with a message for all you wandering souls looking for answers and some direction in life. Listen with your minds eye for a moment to these lyrics from " ‘Til it’s Time to Leave"-Fingertip dancing on a whiskey bottle stain/Walking outside looking for a hole in the rain/Four clicks and the neon fades into the night/Four blocks and the shadows grow out of street light...Yes, this man has the soul of poet and the life experience that has traveled many lands. He lives to sing about it and makes music that will put an extra skip in your step and a smile in your heart. Good music with lyrics that actually make sense and mean something-this is not something that is all too common anymore.

© Keith "MuzikMan" Hannaleck
September 13, 2004

Rating-9/10

01. Still Looking for My Home (5:53)
02. I Don't Know What to Do (4:37)
03. Is This a Test? (2:44)
04. Almost (4:21)
05. Iceberg (3:18)
06. 'Til it's Time to Leave (4:38)
07. The Ghost or the Fear (5:56)
08. Rachel (4:20)
09. Firefly (3:31)
10. Underneath the Ground (5:17)
11. More Than This (5:54)
12. Naive Melody (4:53)

Pete Muller
Artist Site