Tender Prey

Tender Prey was recorded in sessions over about four months. The band worked at Hansa Tonstudios and Vielklang in Berlin and at Trident and The Strongroom in London, with Mercy and Alice cut at The Studio in Richmond, Australia. The mixes were made at The Strongroom in January 1988 and at The Power Plant in Carlton, Australia, in March. The album is dedicated to the Brazilian actor Fernando Ramos da Silva, who was killed by police in Sao Paulo in November 1987 at the age of 19.

It opens with The Mercy Seat, released as a single in May 1988. Deanna is loosely based on the Edwin Hawkins Singers' version of the hymn Oh Happy Day, and City of Refuge draws on Blind Willie Johnson's I'm Gonna Run to the City of Refuge. Cave later said of the record: "It was a nightmare", and that it was made at a difficult time in his life, when things were spiralling out of control in a lot of areas.

The album charted in Britain, where it reached 67, and in Greece, but not in Australia or the US. It was reissued in a remastered edition on 29 March 2010, it sits in the top 30 of the book 100 Best Australian Albums, and in 2012 it was added to the National Film and Sound Archive's Sounds of Australia.