Internal Exile

No doubt this should be in a different thread altogether, but I might add that I have never seen Fish as being directly Nationalistic, anti-English, or indeed anti any nationality! The complete opposite to be honest. - Internal Exile was always a collection of songs for me, rather than a coherent concept. I love a lot of the material on there as individual tracks, but the more ‘Scottish’ numbers on there are perhaps more personal to Fish and other Scots than they are to me! I’m trying to be diplomatic!

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It’s funny - but there’s definitely a number of themes woven in Internal Exile. Whether on purpose or not I can’t say.

Think of Fish’s dealings with EMI (Tongues), Scottish Nationalism (Internal Exile) just as two examples. There’s frustration that probably follows on from ViaWoM (Vigil and Big Wedge) - a feeling of helplessness at being able to directly tackle these big things that seem to be such a huge bureaucratic and monolithic social monsters.

Of course IE is indeed a collection of songs, but it’s inescapable that there is a social and political (or apolitical) commentary throughout many of the songs.

To me it’s not anti-English or even anti-establishment. It’s simply an album that in places shows that an individual has to fight to keep his head above water while having a strong desire for change - to see everyone treated fairly and equally. Lucky is a great example of this being put alongside the Scottish Independence theme.

This fairness theme appears in recent albums, albeit less often (Square Go - 13th Star for example). So yes, there are these themes in IE and certainly independence is a strong one. But it’s independence in many ways - not just Scottish Independence.

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