Songs For The Terrestrially Challenged is the second album from The(e) Speaking Canaries, a Pittsburgh-based indie rock band. Songs For The Terrestrially Challenged is the first Speaking Canaries album to be released on compact disc, and the first to see worldwide distribution; therefore, it has often been erroneously attributed as The(e) Speaking Canaries' debut album. (The Joy of Wine, the band's actual debut, was a vinyl-only release on a small label and was limited to five hundred copies.) Nevertheless, Songs For The Terrestrially Challenged set a number of precedents for which the group would eventually become notorious: long songs, a long total running time, and multiple released versions of the same album.
Songs For The Terrestrially Challenged is probably best known for including not one but two Van Halen covers: "Girl Gone Bad" and "Secrets" -- a bold move for a band in an indie scene in which giving credit to spandex-clad arena rockers is generally frowned upon. (What's more, "Summer's Empty Resolution", a harmonics-drenched solo for acoustic guitar, is vaguely reminiscent of Eddie Van Halen's "Spanish Fly".)
Read more about Songs For The Terrestrially Challenged: Track Listing, Personnel, "Low-fi Version"
Famous quotes containing the words songs for, songs and/or challenged:
“When I am dead, my dearest, Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head, Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember, And if thou wilt, forget.”
—Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830–1894)
“And songs climb out of the flames of the near campfires,
Pale, pastel things exquisite in their frailness
With a note or two to indicate it isn’t lost,
On them at least. The songs decorate our notion of the world
And mark its limits, like a frieze of soap-bubbles.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“A major problem for Black women, and all people of color, when we are challenged to oppose anti-Semitism, is our profound skepticism that white people can actually be oppressed.”
—Barbara Smith (b. 1946)