TENDER PREY

180 GRAM HEAVYWEIGHT VINYL REISSUE.
Vinyl transfer approval overseen by Mick Harvey Summer 2014 and cut at Abbey Road studios.
This edition, approved personally by Nick Cave, is finally available again on it's original format.

It was Tender Prey that raised the delightfully unlikely spectre of Nick Cave the pop star.
What was even better was that the song that damn near did it - "The Mercy Seat" - was an epic litany relating the thoughts of a condemned prisoner awaiting his walk to the electric chair.

"The Mercy Seat" is Cave and his Bad Seeds at their best: the former leavening his mordant tale with grim wit ("A ragged cup, a twisted mop . . , the face of Jesus in my soup"), the latter conjuring an appropriately demented squall of electric guitars and violins.

Tender Prey was a massively important album for Cave: for the first time, he is unabashed about projecting his bleak and often misunderstood sense of humour and his ability to write as good a pop tune as anyone.
Tender Prey is the beginning of Cave's voyage toward acceptance by the general public and perhaps himself.