What a wonderful, thought-provoking little folk song, and one that I almost missed altogether amongst the mountain of emails in the in-box.
Tobias Arbo’s (Tobias Ekelund) ‘Tinfoil Hat’ is, he says, “about the feeling of powerlessness in watching a family member lose themselves in conspiracy theories. The frustration of not getting there and the paradoxical kind of love-hate that we only feel for those closest to us. A theme that also reflects how vulnerable we become when we involuntarily spend too much time alone.”
There’s quite a lot to unpack here. Firstly, “the frustration of not getting there”, which I assume means being unable to ‘get through’ to the person holding the opinion. But that suggests a degree of arrogance about one’s own opinion, which, if it shared with someone else, then becomes an anti-conspiracy theory or even a new and different one.
The ‘Tinfoil Hat’ of the title by the way refers to what I think might be a 1950s phrase, suggesting that if you wear a headpiece made out of tinfoil it will protect your brain from probing electromagnetic fields that can ‘read your mind.’ And those probing waves come from the government of course.
Such imaginations were popular in the post-war era of McCarthyism in the US and of Orwell’s 1984 and made even worse by Roswell and other little green men incidents; all of them around the same time and inducing a state of paranoia amongst the population.
I could ramble on about conspiracy theories all night. I have my own strong views on a myriad of subjects. I said for the last two years that they’d try to kill Trump before and they only just failed. And they’ll try again, take my word.
Now normally I don’t share them with anyone of a like mind so they aren’t conspiracy theories but I don’t want to wander any further along that road because there are several signs that the conspiracy theory angle is disguising what the song is really about.
Lines like,
“Buckets of family therapy tears/Rip all the pillows/Watch them feathers fly/But don’t you dare, don’t say goodbye”
and
“Christmas Eve/But there’s nothing that I want to eat/Too much left unwrapped below the Christmas tree”
are more suggestive of a breakdown in a relationship that is irretrievable to the point where the actions and opinions of one become surreal in the mind of the other, leading to the inability to respond other than in kind, “Like world class actors stay in character all night.”
Or have I just dreamt up a conspiracy theory of my own?
A simple plucked melody, his voice, a little whistling and minimal instrumentation is all it takes.
He’s good at creating imagery. In the last song of his we listened to, ‘Pyre’, he was building a prison around himself by declining to reveal his true feelings for the one he loved lest that person backed away from him.
A smart writer, as the Donald might say.
His debut album ‘Yellow Woods’ arrives on August 30th via Made Records.
Find him on:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tobiasarbo/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tobiasarbo/
