Florida guitar-based pop duo SALES's (Jordan Shih and Lauren Morgan) charming track "Chinese New Year" may have been released three years ago on their self-titled EP, but it's as timely as ever - given that the Lunar New Year festivities are just around the corner.
The band's name may suggest that their music traffics in some kind of irony commentary on modern consumer culture, but their music - minimalist in sound but expansive in tone, warm, honest, intimate, emotionally intelligent, infectious - is a far cry away from the materialist implications of their chosen moniker, which was inspired by the careers of Morgan's parents:
"I brought up the name to Jordan because both of my parents are independent sales reps, on commission. I’ve grown-up with mountains of product in the garage, spilling over into the house. They are excellent sales people. I’m unsure, but most people abhor sales people, yea?" (Lauren Morgan, Ground Sounds).
The track's instrumentation is light and airy - as befitting a song about the annual Chinese New Year festivities - but there's a faint ambivalence in Morgan's vocals which eventually manifests in a confession that there's something she needs to escape from:
'I see you at the moviesI see you with your lipstick onI'm looking at the cosmosI'm hoping that we get alongIt's time for an ovationIt's time for us to make a changeIt's time for a Chinese New YearIt's time for me to make a wayThen I getNo I can'tWait to get far from hereNo I can'tI can't wait to get out of hereNo I can'tNo I can'tNo I can'tWait to get out of here'
Lyrics: Genius
The song saves its understated confession for the very end, which reveals why so much weight is being placed on the hope that the new year will result in a disruption to the patterns established during the previous year:
'Sweared a lot and I bared a lotI was dead a lot last yearWept a lot, oh baby, you slept a lotI was left a lot last yearPleased a lot, baby, you seized my heartAnd I started to fall last year'
