For a song that is, ultimately, a rip-off/cash-in of something that I’m not sure whether its creators completely understood (Psychedelia, with “porpoise” a stand-in for the Beatles’ Walrus), the Monkees’ “Porpoise Song” is surprisingly transcendent of its origins. Maybe it’s the wonderful arrangement (The organ holding everything down, the strings – very heavily influenced by “I Am The Walrus” – looming in the background and the guitar clanging on the left channel… And then that wonderful, almost orchestral swell at 2:56, with the bells chiming and tapes unwinding and and and… Oh, how I love the way this song is laid out, even if it is just “I Am The Walrus”‘ ending done slightly differently), maybe it’s the vocals (or, more importantly, the backing vocals – I don’t know why, but there’s something about the slight dischordance there that really works for me), or maybe it’s the lyrics that, when freed of the “porpoise” conceit, have an epic melancholy that I prefer to John Lennon’s freeform weirdness in the inspiratory song, but I find myself preferring this to “I Am The Walrus” for some inexplicable reason. Whereas the Beatles were angry and snide in their psychedelic masterpiece, the Monkees seem sad, confused and resigned (“Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye…”) in theirs, and that’s the kind of thing that’ll always win my attention, I shamefully admit.
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