On “Super Jolly,” Aaron Thompson and Modern Feelings Music offer a twinkling, reflective-kissed holiday original that could have sat in the limelight for decades. Recorded in Sacramento and hewn with a keen ear for vintage sparkle, the track marries Nick Martìni’s sleek, classic crooner cool to Lahre Shiflet’s bright, expressive charisma. These two voices sound as comfortable together as old friends taking their first step onto a 1950s radio stage.
What’s striking is the lushly detailed big-band world Thompson builds around them. Horns glow, strings sweep, and an upright bass strolls beneath the arrangement with the warmth that only classic swing can summon. Jazz guitar lines blink on and off like holiday lights, snappy, traditional-swing drums establish a giddy-go-lucky heartbeat, and keep the duet dancing onward. It’s the sort of scene that immediately brings to mind TV holiday swirls, tuxedos, satin gowns, and a stage sprinkled in snowflakes.
Martìni and Shiflet have an easy chemistry throughout the back-and-forth kineticism of that retro-sound world. Martìni provides just the right amount of wistful charisma to ground the performance and lend it that easy, fireside confidence we associate with mid-century crooners. At the same time, Shiflet exudes a playful sparkle that raises the flirtation factor between them. The play between them is theatrical in the best sense, warm, winking, joyfully conscious of its vintage roots, but never heavy-handed or self-consciously imitative. Instead, this duet lands as an up-to-date homage to a timeless style.
“Super Jolly” leans into brilliant storytelling and a merry jolt of season-high romance. It’s a song that encapsulates the inescapable sensation of hearing a cherished holiday classic for the first time, familiar, cozy, and immediately cue-it-up-again-worthy.