CLEVELAND, Ohio - Wednesday is not going to be a good day to be a middle school teacher in Northeast Ohio.

Judging from the crowd that filled Quicken Loans Arena for Columbus favorites Twenty One Pilots - aka the duo of vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Tyler Joseph and drummer Josh Dun - expect to see a lot of napping 13-year-olds in second-period English.

But Miss Wormwood (if you're from here, you know who that is), forgive them. As a matter of fact, turn it into a teaching moment: Have the kids write essays about what an entertaining concert the pair staged.

Myla Weber was probably the youngest patron in a crowd full of youngsters at Quicken Loans Arena for Tuesday's Twenty One Pilots show. Myla, with dad Mitch and mom Morgan, of Bucyrus, will be 12 weeks old on Wednesday.

Just make sure you have the thesaurus cued up.

If there's a musical influence that Joseph hasn't incorporated into the band, I missed it. There are hints of electronica (they employ too many tracks, but that's something that can be addressed in future evolutions of the band, by adding real players and not tracks), metal, hip-hop, reggae, gospel and flat-out crooning.

Here's the deal: Joseph can flat-out sing. You'd have to call him a tenor, but he's effortlessly able to slide into a falsetto that's almost Vienna Boys Choir in its purity. At the same time, he can rock out nu-metal, almost like a second coming of the Red Hot Chili Peppers' Anthony Kiedis, and yet there's a Sinatra-like quality to songs like "Bandito,'' "Levitate" and, of course, the band's signature finale "Trees."

Dun's drumming is marching-band crisp - and as a guy who was a four-year drummer in the best marching band in the history of the state of Virginia (Go Governors!), I'm telling you that's a compliment - and his grooves seem to have a bit of that halftime flair.

Ah, flair. And now we get to the real appeal of Twenty One Pilots: There are bands who write good songs. There are bands with good singers. There are bands who fire off exciting pyrotechnics. There are bands with Trans-Siberian Orchestra-worthy light shows. There are bands with lead singers who broadcast charisma like the aura of a sun.

Ain't too many bands, though, that have all that, and Twenty One Pilots is all that . . . and a lot more. Including flair.

Tunes like "Jumpsuit,'' "Levitate," "Nico and the Niners,'' the aforementioned "Bandito,'' "My Blood," "Morph,'' "Pet Cheetah,'' and "Leave the City,'' all off this month's new release, "Trench,'' showcase a band that's just now finding its wheelhouse.

But if you were paying attention to older songs, like "Fairly Local," "Lane Boy," "Car Radio," "Taxi Cab" and the delightful "We Don't Believe What's on TV,'' you are not surprised.

Of course, you're also 13 to 15 years old.

But what Joseph and Dun did Tuesday night, though, was show just how deep that vein of talent runs, by doing a couple of covers with openers Max Frost and AWOLNATION. The Goo Goo Dolls' "Iris" was nice, but for a music fan of a certain age (who also happens to be The Plain Dealer's pop music critic) the "tell" was in their cover of the Beatles' "Hey Jude.''

Frost, a multi-instrumentalist who builds his songs with loops, and AWOLNATION vocalist Aaron Bruno have decent voices (Bruno's high tenor is the better of the two). But neither can match Joseph, whose vocals are just as solid as his piano-, ukulele-, guitar- and bass-playing. And the irony there is that while they write completely different music, and have completely different styles, Joseph's diversity reminds me of the author of "Hey Jude,'' a fella by the name of McCartney.

Now, I'm not ready to anoint him as the next McCa, or Twenty One Pilots as a successor to the Fab Four. But there's a lot to like about the group. Joseph and Dun are doing things the right way, touring, working, putting out new music on a regular basis - good new music - and building a fan base that is likely to grow with them.

Even if they are likely to sleep through second-period English.