★★★★★
Folk singer/guitarist Peter Mulvey honed his craft as a busker in Dublin and Boston, and his eighth album Kitchen Radio is redolent of relentless travel. In a voice lush and hushed that occasionally sinks into a whisper, Mulvey sings of the "open road that wants you gone" ("Shirt"), as well as footsteps, airplanes, endless cups of coffee and faces that hover around him like ghosts only to vanish...
- www.rollingstone.com
2009-06-08
★★★★★
When it comes to the coffeehouse circuit, the singer/songwriter is someone who takes himself or herself very seriously, and for listeners to really get what the singer/songwriter is about, they must approach the artist's work with the same seriousness. Otherwise, all of the focus on life, love, and the meaning of it all falls flat. Peter Mulvey understands this, and undercuts anyone who might label him a navel-gazer on one of Notes from Elsewhere's livelier cuts, "The Trouble with Poets...
- music.aol.com
2008-08-28
★★★★★
Singer/songwriters often try to do it all. They write, sing, and play their own guitar. While some manage to do all three things at once without falling flat on their faces, others hit the pavement from time to time. Peter Mulvey avoids this dilemma on Ten Thousand Mornings by choosing to interpret a handful of songs from names like Dylan and Costello, and concentrating on his vocals and acoustic guitar work...
- music.aol.com
2008-08-28
★★★★★
Peter Mulvey's third release is a collection of live recordings from a 1998 tour of Ireland. In contrast to the sunny romp of Rapture and the murky angst of Deep Blue, Glencree finds Mulvey in a contemplative mood, attempting, in his words, to "turn the trick of bringing moments to life while simultaneously catching and holding them." This proves to be an excellent approach for Mulvey, whose thunderously masterful fretwork makes him a heart stopping live performer...
- music.aol.com
2008-08-28
★★★★★
After taking a break from the burden of songwriting with 2003's Ten Thousand Mornings, Peter Mulvey returns in 2004 with Kitchen Radio, an album filled with new compositions. As with Eliza Gilkyson's recent release, Land of Milk and Honey, Mulvey has serious things on his mind but he's not about to spell them out in any obvious way. In "29 Cent Head," it's evident that all isn't well in the land of the free, home of the brave...
- music.aol.com
2008-08-28
★★★★★
"I want a deep, resonant, effortless voice," Peter Mulvey confesses in one of the tracks on this ambitious folk album. "A big voice -- bigger than me." Throughout his semi-major-label debut, Mulvey affects a deep, gruff, bluesy vocal style which is, indeed, bigger than him, calling to mind the Rockwellian image of a small child wearing a suit three times his size. For all of its appealing melodies and accomplished acoustic guitar work, the album is full of that sort of overambition...
- music.aol.com
2008-08-28
★★★★★
For sheer musicianship, it is difficult to think of many contemporary guitar playing singer-songwriters who can claim superiority to Peter Mulvey. His third studio album, The Trouble With Poets demonstrates once again the originality and technical proficiency of his guitarwork, incorporating echoes of accomplished fretsmiths like Leo Kottke and Ani DiFranco into a style that is distinctly his own (on "Wings of the Ragman," he even manages an effective impression of the Sundays' David Gavurin)...
- music.aol.com
2008-08-28
★★★★★
Rain was recorded only two years after Peter Mulvey's debut effort, Brother Rabbit Speaks, but his songwriting skills seem to have improved by light years during that period. He has trimmed the excess verbiage, tightened the melodies, and reined in his prodigious guitar abilities from the egregious free for all onslaught of Brother Rabbit into a series of incisive and well-crafted folk songs...
- music.aol.com
2008-08-28
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