My Pal Foot Foot

The Shaggs wrote the original as outsider art — earnest, structurally unstable, made by people who hadn't been told what music was supposed to sound like. Deerhoof covers it as if they recognize something essential in that naivety and want to honor it by pushing it further. The rhythm doesn't so much lock in as negotiate with itself measure by measure, and the guitar parts have a charming wrongness that sounds accidental until you realize no accident could be this consistent. Matsuzaki's vocal delivery here is particularly striking — she sings with total commitment to the song's logic rather than imposing any outside sophistication onto it, which makes the whole thing feel simultaneously primitive and post-everything. There's something genuinely funny about it, but not in a condescending way — it's funny the way absurdism is funny, because it has located something true about the arbitrary nature of musical convention. The emotional experience is surprisingly warm. You'd play this for someone you trusted not to ask too many questions about it.