It happens rarely with the songs I turn up in my relentlessly dumb quest for new stuff to listen to, but sometimes, I give a song more than one listen before I press delete (or, occasionally, save).

This is almost certainly because – please avert your eyes, gentle artistic souls – most new music I listen to is cobblers. Decisions are made in seconds, not verse-chorus-verse cycles. So what made Brave Mariner different?

Actually, I’m not totally sure, which made them ideal candidates to be featured.

If a band has something that convinces you to hand over more than 10 seconds of your time, they must be something right. Why worry about reasons?

It’s probably to do with the fact that the song Facely Friend is scuffed with gold leaf and jagged glass.

Facely Friend has a pre-chorus/chorus combo to die for; the kind that can serve as a calling card for a whole career. It’s a curiously saccharine adjunct to the rest of the song, which is angular and barren in comparison to the silky beauty in the chorus’ punctuation of the song.

Will this flash of brilliance catapult Brave Mariner heavenwards? Probably not – not these days anyway. But it will make you feel outrageously alive, and, well, that’s good enough.

MORE: bravemariner.bandcamp.com