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“Save it For Later” – The (English) Beat
(Words/music: The Beat, available on Special Beat Service, IRS 1982)

Too often, the phrase “less is more” comes across as a euphemism for being incomplete when the author intends it as a complement.  It’s the kind of oxymoron that make stand-up comedians seem brilliant.  Instead, if someone is to defend against embellishment (or against a more ornate object), it makes more sense to praise the “less” for efficiency (where “more” is unnecessary since the minimum pieces accomplish the task) or for potency (meaning that adding “more” would dilute the mixture).  Of course, efficiency and potency aren’t as tidy as that cliché, so too many of us are trained to look at something bare bones, praise it for being unfinished, and exacerbate my pet peeve.

Anyway, I digress; the reason I bring up this phrase is that some might be tempted to apply it to “Save It for Later.”  However, rather than feel incomplete, “Save It For Later” works well because of it’s efficiency and potency.  Built around a single I-V-IV chord progression (which, if I’m hearing Dave Wakeling correctly, is played with a specific open tuning), “Save It For Later” makes the most of these three chords, whether strummed, arpeggiated, or augmented by strings.  The persistent riff gives the rest of the song room to embellish, sometimes with horns, sometimes with a drum lick, and sometimes with a variation on the guitar figure.  Wakeling understands the power of his chord progression and milks every last bit out of these three chords, using repetition of both lyrics and melody to achieve his purpose.  In this sense, he doesn’t waste a single word or note; instead, he wrings out a variety of chording styles out of his progression and repeats phrases (sometimes sticking on a word or two for a few seconds) rather than invent something new (even twisting phrases to get double meanings out of a few lines).  It’s not that he’s working with the minimal pieces – rather, he knows how to maximize the ones he selects.

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