Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds - Tender Prey

Tender Prey is the fifth studio album by Australian rock band Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, originally released in September 1988 via Mute Records.

The Seeds produced their strongest album yet, with the insanely powerful, gripping Tender Prey. Rather than simply redoing what they'd already done, Nick Cave and company took their striking musical fusions to deeper and higher levels all around, with fantastic consequences.

The album boldly starts out with an undisputed Cave masterpiece - "The Mercy Seat", a chilling self-portrait of a prisoner about to be executed that compares the electric chair with the throne of God. Queasy strings and spectral piano snake through a rising roar of electric sound - a common musical approach from many earlier Seeds songs, but never so gut-wrenching as here. Cave's own performance is the perfect icing on the cake, commanding and powerful, excellently capturing the blend of crazed fear and righteousness in the lyrics.

Matching that high point is near impossible for anything else on Tender Prey, but more than enough highlights take a bow that demonstrates the album's quality. "Deanna" is another great blast from the Seeds, a garage rock-style rave-up that lyrically is everything Natural Born Killers tried to be, but failed at - killing sprees, Cadillacs, and carrying out the work of the Lord, however atypically.

The echoing, gentle-yet-rough sonics on the Blind Willie Johnson-inspired "City Of Refuge" and the gentler drama of "Sugar Sugar Sugar" also do well in keeping the energy level up. On the quieter side, Cave indulges his penchant for gloomy piano-led ballads throughout, and quite well at that, with such songs as "Watching Alice", "Mercy", and the end-of-the-evening singalong "New Morning". "Sunday's Slave" has a beautifully brooding feeling to it thanks to the combination of acoustic guitar and piano, making it a bit of a cousin of Scott Walker's "Seventh Seal."

Tender Prey is a rough album, and was incredibly difficult to write according to the band, but it’s one of the most convincing documents of the Bad Seeds early years, a regular fan favourite which is often claimed to be their best album.

Check out the tracks: “The Mercy Seat”; and “Deanna”.

This LP was pressed in Europe with Remastered Audio on 180 Gram Heavyweight Vinyl, reproduced artwork and digital download.