Identical Strangers

Ezra Collective “God Gave Me Feet For Dancing”

“God Gave Me Feet for Dancing” opens by quoting “Feeling Good,” which strikes me as a rather bold and pointed way to begin a song about dancing – framing ordinary pleasure in the context of triumph over slavery. “God Gave Me Feet for Dancing” is very laid back but there’s a dark and serious current in it regardless of the interpolation – it’s about a happiness that has to be fought for or claimed in defiance, it’s about connection between people as a survival mechanism. But the laid back aspect is the crucial thing about the song – it loosens you up, it calms you down, it makes you feel a little more free.

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Claude Fontaine “Laissez Moi L’aimer”

Claude Fontaine’s music is a seamless and slightly uncanny blend of Studio One-style reggae, Brazilian tropicalia, and French ye-ye pop. She’s connecting the dots between three distinct strains of charming, relaxed mid-20th century music, and while you could get upset about a white woman from Los Angeles doing this and call it appropriation, I think it’s better to appreciate that this has happened without being the result of actual calamitous imperialism.

“Laissez Moi L’aimer” is pretty much a mid-60s reggae song with ye-ye vocals – two very familiar sounds that click together so logically I’m surprised I don’t think I’ve encountered it before. Fontaine sings it en français, but the lyrics roughly translate to a story about a woman meeting a man she idolizes. She’s very empathetic to him, but reading between the lines I think the encounter has demystified him for her. The refrain suggests that she needs to distance her love of his art from him – “laissez moi l’aimer / malgré vous,” or “let me love it / in spite of yourself.”

Buy it from Bandcamp.