Clever lads, these Austin boys called Dynamite Hack. On their debut CD, Superfast, they lift the street thugga lyrics from Eazy-E and Ice Cube’s “Boyz-N-The Hood,” rework them with breathy, sensitive vocals and folk-rock instrumentation, and wrap the whole thing up with a musical nod to the Beatles’ “Blackbird.” Voila! A hilarious parody that is the biggest radio hit to come out of Austin since Fastball’s “The Way” — it’s as if Ben Folds Five got the funk. Novelty aside, what about the other eleven cuts, all originals? Well, they all rock, thanks in no small part to the buzzsaw guitars and all the inflections of the Ramones, Ugly Americans, Steely Dan, Joe Jackson, and the Doors that I detect, making for the smartest power pop to break out of Texas in years. by Joe Nick Patoski
