This morning I skipped ahead a bit and listened to
The Association's Greatest Hits, and I noticed a couple things about "Like Always." I had to figure out the part to confirm it (and I'm still not that sure), but there's a descending line in the backing vocals (which I think is chromatic - D, C#, C, B) during the line "Things are gettin' better" during the last verse. There's some friction there between the music (the downward line that implies sadness or disappointment) and the lyrics (that have an uplifting sentiment). In some ways, it's a foreshadowing of the spoken part at the end: "You know I don't know what to do about that girl / She just comes and goes and goes and goes and goes." At first, the girl makes his "troubles seem funny and small," but then she "comes and goes." There's the same positive and negative aspects in the "Things are gettin' better" juxtaposed against that descending backing vocal line.
I got thinking about the song again after I listened to it, and I realized that in the middle, where there are numerous vocal parts, one of them ("Slip, slip away" at about 1:38) has a rather large interval between the two syllables of "away," demonstrating distance. I had to figure it out to discover that it's a fifth (E to A).
And while looking up all of these things to write about it, I discovered something else. The backing vocals during the first half of the last verse remain on an A note. There's a stasis in pitch apparently to reflect the line "I've been too long in this groove."
