The Decemberists

judd.baker: The Decemberists were made for this round

• ared56 +1
• shea nowicki +1
• Edward James +1 — I really loved this, just about gratuitous violence without any background context. Really imbues the vibe of the theme imo. The “culling” terminology makes it very mysterious. Love it.
• Claire +1 — Like this take on the theme a lot, and I feel like the instrumentation really adds to the eerie/ironic vibe of the song. I didn’t have a single criterion for judging this round but I think the ones that I voted for all struck me as doing something particularly artistically interesting (in addition to being about killing of course)
• SamRobertsND 0 — Peter: "Good instrumentals, catchy. Not really sure what it is about." I liked it on a basic level but got distracted in a way that I didn't listening to other contenders on here. Lyrics too ambiguous/figurative for me to compete with the more literal competitors on here.
• Joseph Harvey 0 — Cool
• fionmul -1 — this was lyrically disturbing (albeit on theme) and i just in general didn’t like it
• Regina Scime -1 — Are you okay

• Spicey Riche +4
• SamRobertsND +1 — Finally a song actually about whales, the ostensible theme of the round. Misadventures of Flapjack-esque 1870s nautical scurvy-ridden diseased sailor energy. Masterpiece of a story.
• ared56 +1
• shea nowicki +1
• Sam Ary +1
• fionmul 0 — The voice sounded like a joke but there was potential here overall fs
• Edward James 0 — This reminds me of No Country For Old Men. The whale representing chance - you can do everything you think you should and pursue it with singlemindedness, but chance might have other things in mind. And I don't mean the coin flip thing Judd, I mean the car accident at the end.
• Peter Seeley 0 — 3 minute of this would be great. 5 minutes tolerable. 8 minutes is cruel and unusual
• Claire 0 — This one is only incidentally about whales
• Joseph Harvey 0 — Stereotypical and harmful depiction of whales. Educate yourself