photo by Zach Wagner

[Editor's note: This column previews In Love's CD release show on Friday in the Slowdown's Front Room with Flight Metaphor, Field Club and Calamity & Jane. Doors are at 8 p.m., and the cover is $7.]

Dear lovebirds, meet dopamine, norepinephrine and phenylethylamine. It's OK, you won't have to remember their names at the end of the night. If all goes well, they'll be the chemicals to make themselves welcome in your brain after you unknowingly release them, and they don't care if you know how they do what they do so well.

Because of some sweet romance, they'll bring on the good feeling In Love's song called, well, "Good Feelin'" talks of. It's a meta sort of music because just like that crush that sends you swooning, the attraction of this song is a bit hard to explain.

photo by Zach Wagner

It's repetitive with a main riff played through most of the song. It's in the key of C. And it's solely about love, that oft-covered subject of pop music. But for all its potential cliches, its simplistic beauty and singer/songwriter Zach Short's vocals — think Adam Levine without an inflated sense of self — keep it from falling into that trap.

Short juxtaposes an idiosyncratic lyrical rhythm in the verses with a chorus built upon pickups of straight sixteenths. That main guitar riff stays mostly syncopated save for the tags on the ends of verses and choruses, and a second slinky guitar line plays the rhythm's straight part. With each trip through the choruses and also the bridge, the band does a dynamic swoop near the end that builds the tension, which is then released much like those chemicals.

"Good Feelin'" is the eighth track off In Love's debut CD, With You, released at Slowdown on Friday night. The Omaha band recorded its first album at Bailey Recording in Omaha over three eight-hour days. Even though Short says he recorded his vocals after a full day of work at Omaha's Standing Bear Elementary, he's impressed with how the late-night Friday singing session sounds.

Hear for yourself with this preview, and play along with the transcription below:

CHORDS

Main riff

7 pull off to 5
5
5
5
X
X

3
0
0
3
2
3

1
1
2
3
3
1

Main riff repeated
It's just a whisper that you kiss
that twists my head around
It's the playfulness of your perfume's mist
that has me knocked flat out

You've got me glowing through 
the darkest moods,
and you never seem to let me down
                      F-G7  F-G7        F-G7
'cause what I found, what I found 

Main riff
You give me good feelin' 
You give me good feelin' you do now 
You've got my heart reeling in for more 
of that feelin' I am sure 
       G7      F-G7          F-G7  
It's good, it's good, it's so good to me 

Main riff
It's in your style, your smile,
the way you wave goodbye
It's in your soul
It's how you rock 'n' roll
and how you say, "You're mine!"
All mine 

You’ve got me in a blur of losin’ words 
And you don’t even have to try 
F-G7     F-G7       F-G7
You don’t even have to try

CHORUS 

           Am
It's all good at the break of dawn 
It's all good when the sun is gone 
It's all good for the in between 
           F
It's all good and you know what I mean 

           Am
It's all good at the break of dawn 
It's all good when the sun is gone
          Dm
It's all good for the in between 
           F                       G
It's all good and you know what I mean 

CHORUS

End on C7

Michael Todd is Hear Nebraska's managing editor. He's the luckiest man of them all. Reach him at michaeltodd@hearnebraska.org.