Back in Middle School-- probably around the sixth grade-- my music teacher attempted to educate us on the history of rock music. We'd done classical music the year before, and I think it was his way of trying to look hip the following year, all while tuning our young minds into the music he enjoyed in his youth, back when TV was just beginning to toy with color.

In order to get us familiar with some of the music, he had us memorize an incredibly long medley of old pop songs, which had been dubbed "Rock On!" by its creators. Of course, this totally failed to interest most of us. In fact, by the time we were done learning the songs, I never wanted to hear "At the Hop" or "Leader of the Pack" ever again. Regardless of that, though, it forever altered my perception of the late 1950s and early 1960s and the music that era left to us. When I think of oldies now, I think of girl group harmonies, and singing the first verse and chorus to "Wake Up, Little Suzie."

If "Wake Up Little Suzie" is the exact song I think of when I think of when I hear the term oldies, then "Spinning Out" by the Pinehurst Kids could very well be the first one that comes to mind whenever someone near me says "indie rock." The clean guitars in the verse, the fuzzy chorus, the back-up harmonies, the vague emo tinges in the melody, and the occasional straining of the singer-- it's a perfect indie rock archetype, and one that the entirety of the Kids' third album, Bleed It Dry, adheres to.

Everywhere you go on this record, some other act is right there with you. Fellow Northwesterners the Alkaline Trio made Bleed It Dry's cousin with From Here to Infirmary earlier this year, and the big, catchy melodies of recent Built to Spill are lingering somewhere in the kids' catalogue of influences. "Rollover" is a regular Superchunk of solid indie rock, blasting along on fuzzy bass and Rob Duncan's punk-injected drums.

The band buy some early Sunny Day Real Estate on "The Onceler," a reference Dr. Seuss' "The Lorax." Vocalist/guitarist/songwriter Joe Davis actually manages to be coherent while shredding his throat on the high notes-- since the band's first album, he's evolved into a powerful vocalist, impassioned, but always melodic above all else. The addition of second guitarist Devin Morrow to the lineup has added greatly to their punch, too, making the Kids into a formidable unit capable of delivering some blistering music when at their best.

At their worst, the Pinehurst Kids are simply kind of boring. "All I Know" is a midtempo trot that just doesn't operate on the same level as the other songs around it, even with the addition of a brief Moog solo. The closer, "Flashbulb," is also pretty gray-hued, receding into the background to hang out with the wallpaper and ornamental throw rugs. And then there's that aforementioned tendency to sound like the exact middle ground of indie rock. To explain why this isn't as annoying as it sounds, I'd like to offer you, the reader, a free lesson from reviewing school that I like to call "Better Living Through Analogies":

In the tree outside of my father's office, there are a couple of starlings who nest every summer. For those of you not familiar with the starling, it looks like a small crow and it's quite adept at mimicking the various sounds it hears every day. One of these particular starlings has begun to mimic the car alarm that goes off every day at the health club next door, and he does it perfectly, beginning with the two-note siren sound and cycling through the whole alarm until he finally gets to the "blip-blip" noise that signifies the alarm being turned off. It's amusing, but it can be just as annoying as the real alarm if he does it enough.

Now, by way of backward reference, we tie this into the review thusly: the Pinehurst Kids are hardly starlings, taking their sometimes obvious influences and reference points and moving far enough away from them that it never sounds like outright mimicry. The Kids have been around long enough to claim their own ground and landscape it accordingly, drawing on their influences only for inspiration. And their musical skill undoubtedly makes this easier for them to achieve. Duncan's impressive kickdrum work on the pummeling "Deconstruct" is a thing to behold, and the band's hurried frenzy that it propels will make your head spin.

The Pinehurst Kids are most engaging when they're kicking up dust, and that's what they do for most of Bleed It Dry. The end result is a cohesive album of solid indie rock that does the label proud. Given one more album, the Kids could make something really essential. For now, at least I know I can go to this album when I need to get "At the Hop" out of my head.

-Joe Tangari