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On Sunday I went for a fairly long drive by myself and loaded up with a few albums to help get me there and back. Most of the albums I chose were selected to keep me awake but some others were just things I felt like listening to. I thought I'd run through them...

Secret Samadhi is Live's 3rd album, released in 1997 as the follow-up to their hit 1994 album Throwing Copper. This album is a heavy rock/pop album with driving drums and guitar, and classic heavy rock vocals. Although this album seemed to disappoint some of the fans Live had attracted with Throwing Copper, I loved Secret Samadhi the first time I heard it. This is one of those albums that seems to feature no stand-out singles, even though it spawned 4 US Top 20 singles.

Overall Secret Samadhi seems to head-bang along quite nicely! However, there is quite a bit of variation on this album. Rattlesnake opens the album and builds things up quite quickly - it is a well done opener. This is followed by Lakini's Juice and Graze, two of the heavier songs on the album featuring nice distorted guitars and some stand-out vocals. Turn My Head is an excellent ballad, complete with mellow chorused guitar and strings, with a build up to a lovely guitar solo and anthemic drumming - this is definitely the most mainstream song on the album. Heropsychodreamer is reminiscent of early U2, although done quite a bit heavier.

I think those who don't like Secret Samadhi would probably have 2 main objections. Firstly, there is a bit of a formula where many songs begin quietly and build up once or twice into big rock anthems with big guitar solos. Personally I think the contrast between heavy and light is one of the features of this album. Also, the lyrics are generally more abstract and harder to relate to than some of the songs on Throwing Copper. I've never bothered tried to work out what many of the songs are about...

However, I still really like this album. It's all about drums, guitar... and vocals... I like that! I think Secret Samadhi is Live's best album.