"A Different Point of View" (1993)

[listen]

"A Different Point of View," the fourth song in the Very sequence and the first not to be released as a single, makes report from the unruly precincts of a new relationship, identifying genders carefully scrubbed as usual. The situation it describes is the sort of yawing back and forth between two people who might be in love, but not yet sure whether they are compatible, or "built for the long haul" in plain speaking. For those listening to the album in sequence, as I usually do, it's the point where it begins to settle into itself as a whole. It is the shortest song on the album after "I Wouldn't Normally Do This Kind of Thing," even though they have two of the longest titles on the album (with "Yesterday, When I Was Mad"). "A Different Point of View" serves as another place for Chris Lowe's soundscapes, which of course is fine. Besides these soundscapes, every track on Very bears feelings of sweet and wounded optimism, the knowledge of pain and love at once. They live on a spectrum of anxiety from butterflies to fear and trembling, the way people living through love affairs experience them. As always, the only thing that matters is love, a signal virtue of the album. At the bridge: "Just say yes / Please," which incidentally contains the titles of their first and 10th albums. So lovely, so felt, so slick—the slickness may well be part of the appeal. Lowe and Tennant are so convincingly urbane, so self-possessed, actually yawning on the cover of their second album. On "A Different Point of View" we begin to discover the interior world of the poser who can't be bothered to cover his mouth.