Music

Average customer rating:

not the best album, but one of the greatest.
No tender songs for me
uneven effort
Cave's Best Album!! Moody and Rockin'!!
This is a classic.

Tender Prey
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds
Manufacturer: Mute U.S.
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

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From Her to Eternity
Let Love In
Your Funeral...My Trial
The Good Son
The Boatman's Call

ASIN: B000003Z51
Release Date: 1992-07-28

Tracks:

The Mercy Seat
Up Jumped The Devil
Deanna
Watching Alice
Mercy
City Of Refuge
Slowly Goes The Night
Sunday's Slave
Sugar Sugar Sugar
New Morning
The Mercy Seat (Video Mix)

Amazon.com

It was Tender Prey that raised the delightfully unlikely specter 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 humor 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. Everything good he's done since--and there's been an impressive amount--starts here. --Andrew Mueller

Customer Reviews:

not the best album, but one of the greatest........2006-06-28

anyone so dense that they "don't get" the theme of "mercy seat" and why the repetition is necessary for the intensity of the song...should be electrocuted.

No tender songs for me.......2006-01-21

"Tender prey" pretty much marks the border between Nick Cave's raw, more experimental albums ("From her to eternity", "First born is dead" and "Your funeral, my trial") and more accessable song collections that would follow with "The Good son", "Henry's dream" and further. That doesn't mean that our favorite mad preacher is up for cheap melodies and easy listening.
The opener here is the instant classic "The mercy seat", a haunting, seven minute monologue of a convict strapped in the electric chair. A verbal play about self doubt, conviction and unbearable knowledge of the Old Testaments's rage unfolds. The music is one stunning build-up to the inevitable end.
The three Bad Seeds dvd's which are available now, "The Video's" and the live performances "God is in the house" and "LIve at the Paradiso" all contain the song.
The documentary annex roadmovie video "The road to God knows where" shows a scene in which Nick Cave and the boys perform an accoustic version for a radio station, the live album "Live seeds" has it as the blasting first song, and when I saw Oncle Nick and his Bad Seeds in November 2004 at The Heineken Music Hall in Amsterdam, Holland, 'THe mercy seat' was good enough for the closing of the second encore.
That shows how this one song still stands up against time.

Other tracks include the sing-along rocksongs "Deanna" and "The city of refuge"; the angry sounding, half sung / half spoken word "Up jumped the devil" and the brooding, sinister pledge "Mercy", for me the highlight on this album (or the absolute depth, depends on which point of view you have on the world.)

Cave is the raging carnivore here, the mad musical stalker on stage, but O how we love to surrender ourselves to him, making us easy, willing prey...

uneven effort.......2005-02-19

While it seems to be the tendency of many Cave fans to drool over anything the man records, this is not an album that is up to par with many of his other efforts. There are some stand out tracks such as "Deanna" and "Mercy", but many of the rest come off as either overwrought or overly bombastic. Obviously, if you're already a fan, you'll want this disc regardless, but to anyone new to Nick Cave's work I recommend his "Best of" collection or "The Boatman's Call".

Cave's Best Album!! Moody and Rockin'!!.......2005-02-03

This album always makes me think of East Berlin, when there was an East Berlin. Gloomy Artiste at Work in Desolate City...however, I'm not even sure if was recorded there (in 1987-8). The songs range from the searingly intense "Mercy Seat" to the punk rocker "Deana" to the impishly wicked "Up Jumped the Devil" to the mournful, pleading "Have Mercy", etc. Half these songs rock and half are very moody and melodic, with pretty piano lines way up in the mix. Nick's voice is in top demonic/tender crooner form throughout, and this album is as cool as the black and red motif of the CD cover picture. One of the greatest albums of the 1980's, and in my opinion, this is Nick's finest work.
It's wicked, it's fun, it's pretty, all at once. It's an ABSOLUTE MUST if you like Nick Cave!

This is a classic........2004-12-23

Even aside from the brooding, epic brilliance of "The Mercy Seat", this album is just raw-nerve, edgy, genius Nick at the height of his strung-out, violent, and delicate glory. "Up Jumped The Devil" is maybe the most amazing track here - tongue-in-cheek Vaudevillian Villainy! "Mercy" is smooth and beautiful, making use of his off-key yet melodious baritone croon, and "Sugar Sugar Sugar" would be awful if it weren't for the honest portrayal of self-loathing and helplessness just under the surface of the lyrics. I love the frustration of a flawed line like "Must I kill that c*cks*cker every day?"
I still don't know if Nick wrote better quality stuff before or after he cleaned up, and I don't think it matters - he's still sexy as hell, and literate as the devil, when he's singing gentle love songs - but this is a defining album of the middle phase of his brilliant career.

Average customer rating:

Tender Prey
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds
Manufacturer: Mute
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Alternative Rock | Styles | Music

Post-Punk | New Wave & Post-Punk | Alternative Rock | Styles | Music

Australia & New Zealand | International | Styles | Music

Pop Rock | CD Singles | Pop | Styles | Music
ASIN: B00004WS9R
Release Date: 2002-02-17

Tracks:

Mercy Seat
Up Jumped the Devil
Deanna
Watching Alice
Mercy
City of Refuge
Slowly Goes the Night
Sunday's Slave
Sugar Sugar Sugar
New Morning
Mercy Seat [Video Mix]

Music:

Music