Welcome to a new regular feature from MacFormat!
Every week, Apple gives away a song from one of the artists on its roster, but while we like this generous bit of marketing a lot, there are two problems. First, Apple doesn't provide an RSS feed alerting you to the free single of the week, but more importantly, there's no way or knowing what the track is like. MacFormat is here to solve both problems with our new Single of the week category here on macformat.co.uk.
James Ellerbeck, MacFormat's reviews editor and resident funkmeister, will be your host, as every week we provide you with a link to the free track and tell you whether or not it's worth downloading. Take it away, James.
This is the Thing
Fink
Not much cop really. I found this an emotionally draining track that takes more than it gives. In it Fink tiptoes around being mournful about the end of a relationship, but lacks the poetry needed to plumb the subject in any depth. What's left is four and half minutes of over-produced, poorly conceived emotional piffle about whether or not his significant other noticed anything missing now that he's left. But there's no imagery offered up for us to connect with beyond this, just the repetition of this line. The arrangement offers little solace, you just get grade school guitar lazily strumming repetitive bars of nothingness, no melody to speak off and dull chord changes. But its those lyrics that really disappoint. He offers no commentary, no observation, no contact, no description of loss or new found freedom, no wisdom.
In this song Fink stares into the middle distance in a faux-fragile state, greedy for our empathy. Perhaps if I was chocked up to the eyeballs on Prozac I would give it but with my wits about me I'd just tell him to buck up. No wonder she didn't notice you were gone mate, if your relationship was anything like this song you were never really there.
Click here to download this week's free song from the iTunes store*.
To subscribe to our Single of the week RSS feed, click here.
* Even though these songs are free, you'll need to have a valid iTunes Store account. You'll also need to have iTunes installed; though the link above should prompt you to install iTunes if it's not already there on your Mac or PC, you can click here to download iTunes manually.
