Six Degrees of Trigonometric Separation

So the theory goes, everyone and everything is six or fewer steps, by way of introduction, from any other person in the world, such that a chain can be made to connect any two people in a maximum of six steps, hence the idea of "six degrees of separation…"

But does it work?

As a (very) unscientific test lets take Twitter ("your world and an @ in a 140 characters or less") as our introduction medium...

Kicking off with the wonderful @JaniceWhaley, a one woman choir and orchestra - a cappella artist extraordinaire - creator of TheSmithsProject and the truly innovative Patchwork Life… Janice lives in San Jose. I read about her in the Grauniad… Go figure…

And by a quirk of following a fellow follower (and a hop, skip and jump across the Pond), @adrian_specs; bon vivant, a man with almost as impeccable musical tastes as your truly, articulate blogger and connoisseur of the finer points of life (The Proms, anyone?)

Who follows / is followed by @SuperJules_84 - these circular introductions get a little bit confusing - fount of knowledge of all things indie as well as the curator of an aural oasis of fine indie pop on UK webradio station ARfm. Those of us of a certain age and inclination would proclaim that Jules is "keeping it Peel", which as accolades go is as high as it gets.  

Which leads us to the main thrust of this post, proving that indeed there are fewer than six degrees of separation between me and the man or woman on the Clapham omnibus or in this case the man and woman who probably use the Northern Line…

Yes the tenuous introduction was to allow me to rave about The Cosines, a band I know absolutely nothing about (which given that they're in London and I'm slumming it in L.A. is probably not that surprising) - save that their single "Hey, Sailor Boy!" got a spin on last week's Indie Wonderland…  And frankly where the hell have you been all of my life? (Oops, then again I'm the wrong side of 50 - sorry kids, your street cred has just been trashed).

Still, if there's a better 3 minutes and 36 seconds of pure indie-pop perfection released this year (rapidly checks that Veronica Falls haven't released a song of 3'36" duration….) I'll renounce the Mighty U's and follow that shower from up the A1.

If you want to know more about the band, check out their website, but suffice to say that singer / songwriter Alice Hubley has one of voices that, if she'd have been born the other side of La Manche, would be nailed-on as a Fille Fragile. As to the single, what can I say? This song could almost be Twee's half-cousin to Elastica's "Stutter" but  without Justine Frischmann's menacing violence. There's a fantastically thumping 60's pop piano intro, a great use of strings in the chorus (along with the Ukulele, I'm keen to see the re-emergence of a string section…) 

And actually, I'm writing this while listening to the song, grinning like a loony and frantically trying to put down some coherent thoughts... I suspect that I've failed miserably

The B-side, "The Answer" offers a duet from Alice and co-founder Simon Nelson, sounding suspiciously like Helen McCookerybook and Carl Evans from The Chefs (shows age again), while the rest of the band chug this song along with a definite Elastica-riff (again, no menacing vocals here). This is another poptastic song and anyone with half an interest in the aforementioned Veronica Falls or Stereolab should snap up this track as well.

If there was any justice in the world Radio in the UK would be playing The Cosines to death. As for radio here in the States, (KCRW perhaps? Sirius? Don't make me laugh) that medium is a very stinky piece of shit on a very long stick, I'm afraid - so I won't hold my breath. 

So you'll just have to go out and buy it. The download is available, like all good purveyors of fine music, from their bandcamp page. Those of us who have banknotes that are all the same colour and feature dead presidents on the reverse can find them on iTunes, Amazon and 7-Digital…

It's less than a BarStucks coffee and far more nourishing...

I'll leave you with the band's tongue-in-cheek video and the thought that there's a great venue on Wilshire Boulevard, El Rey Theatre (and "Theatre" is spelt correctly!) that is calling the band's name...