Internal Exile: Second album by Fish
Date of release: 28 October 1991
Digitally remastered, with two bonus tracks, released 26 October 1998
Unlike his first solo album, which was still heavily influenced by
the last writing sessions with Marillion before leaving that band,
this album was a real solo effort. These were very turbulent years for
Fish - leaving Marillion, an alcohol problem, legal battles with
record companies, financial trouble, having a daughter born, and
getting to grips with being a solo artist.
The result is a somewhat uneven album with several great songs, but
no single theme. Almost all of these songs grew in live shows in the
years after, however. They're all considered classics now.
Maybe it's still not a real solo effort - keyboard wizard Mickey
Simmonds co-authored a lot of the songs, and other musicians also
helped. Looking back, I think the albums with Simmonds are Fish'
best.
Track list:
- Shadowplay
- Credo
- Just Good Friends
- Favourite Stranger
- Lucky
- Dear Friend
- Tongues
- Internal Exile
- Poet's Moon *
- Something In The Air
- Carnival Man *
* : Bonus track
Also title track of the album.
Internal Exile was written as a response to a dare by a
friend who had claimed Fish couldn't write a real good drinking
song. So he did. The song itself is about Scotland, which is being
repressed by the English, and doesn't do anything about it.
Internal Exile
Lyrics:
I saw a blue umbrella in Princess Street Garden
Heading out west for the Lothian Road
An Evening News stuck deep in his pocket
Wrapped up in his problems to keep away the cold
Grierson's spirit haunts the dockyards
Where the only men working are on
documentary crews
Shooting film as the lines get longer
As the seams run out, as the oil runs dry
Chorus:
Hey there laddie, Internal Exile
When will you realise we've got to let go?
Hey there lassie, Internal Exile
When will you realise we've got to let go?
Starlings wheeling round Georgian spires
And the fires of Grangemouth burn the skies
A lion sleeps in a tenement close
In a country that's tired and deaf to his roar
Chorus
They bury a wasteland deep in the wilderness
Poison the soil and reap the harvest
Of blind indifference, greed and apathy
Sowed way back in our history
The fish are few the harbours empty
The keels now rot on our oil-slicked shores
The sheep are gone, the farms deserted
We're out of sight and we're out of mind
Chorus
Like our fathers before us
We've eyes for America
Dream of a new life on foreign shores
But wherever we go, we'll always know
That the land that we stand on is never our own
Chorus