When I walked into the Crocodile last night, a band called 17th Chapter—a quintet with an acoustic guitar, electric guitar, drums, bass, and keyboard—were playing a slow song. It only lasted for about 45 more seconds, and I’m still not sure if it was good. “We’re gonna push a rock song on ya now… with a big rock intro,” said the singer. Folks cheered.

The band proceeded to play something that sounded like a Who version of an eight-bit Nintendo song. There’s a problem with that and the problem is this: the Who are epic, eight-bit Nintendo videogame music is not (unless played by the Advantage). 17th Chapter’s “big rock intro” was more Zelda than it was Who, therefore not epic at all. As for the rest of the song, it became obvious that 17th Chapter are what I like to call fratern-indie rock. Get it? They’re indie rock in spirit, but frat-like in execution. Clever, right? I know.

The singer was wearing a navy blue argyle sweater vest over a white t-shirt, and he had on a plain black trucker hat with sprouts of blonde hair curling out from underneath. The bassist was really into himself. He flaunted flashy rockstar moves like posing the guitar as a big cock and grimacing through his pair of aviator shades. I could see them doing really well at the Gorge opening for the Wallflowers or something, while the drunk, halter-top wearing hippie girls put off getting stoned for 10 more minutes because the singer’s “totally hot.”

I only watched two songs.

As for the next band, the Hungry Pines, well (bias aside, a friend of mine is in the band), they were better. The ladies were lovely, the men were handsome, and none of that has anything to do with the music, which was great.

I’ve seen the Hungry Pines before. It was back in September at the Comet. At the time I had never heard of them but I was impressed. Since then, the one-time trio—Lucas Carlyle, Irene Barber, and Chrysti Harrison—have added bassist Bryce Shoemaker (of Joules and Bronze Fawn), so their sound is bigger, more complete than before.

As for everything else I said about the band back then, well that all stands:

Irene’s voice is gorgeous. As smooth and pretty as Chrissie Hynde, but with a little bit of a bite…they were surprisingly mellow, with a darker and sexy PJ Harvey vibe at times.

Okay, so the PJ Harvey thing might be a little off now. Last night they were brighter than PJ Harvey. And not as mellow as I remember either. So maybe it’s like PJ Harvey on anti-depressants? Maybe. Or maybe it’s not at all.

You can listen to them here.