Sacrilege

'If it weren't sacrilege, I'd call Brendan Cleary the fallen Messiah, a troublesome, tormented prophet showing us the way through the fragmented wilderness that is the modern city, staggering through the disintegrating concrete jungle with his kindred dispossessed. He's the urban cowboy of broken hearts, and he shoots from the lip. His Irish Card was a tearful and brilliant testament of estrangement and exile. Sacrilege finds him in the last chance saloon of inner exile, firing off irreverent messages to anyone who'll listen: obsessed and obsessive, bleak but almost blissful in a manic fashion, scathing yet giving himself the same lashing as anyone else within tongue-reach. The Cleary of Sacrilege is a word-brawler looking for one of Miss Magdalene's lost girls to save him from the cross of his own fear. Sacrilege is the gospel of the city according to Cleary, the four books of Goin' Down Slow, Radioland, Sad Movies and The New Rock 'n' Roll. If poetry is the new rock 'n' roll, then Cleary is the mouthy member of the band, giving it all he's got on stage with Sacrilege before smashing up his heart in the hotel-room. He's the one who'll get us all bust.' - Harry Novak