2021 debut album from Liverpool's Novelty Island is a highly enjoyable trip through sunny, quasi-psychedelic songcraft across tracks with titles like ""Cowboy On A Bicycle"" and ""Blackcurrant Sky,"" songs with insistent alt-pop credentials such as Graham Coxon-indebted ""Michael Afternoon"" and the free flow of the one-day recordings such as album opener, ""This Bird,"" the album is entirely 'other', yet cloaked in a warm-blanket of familiarity. Criss-crossed with cello, harmonium, horns and banjo, How Are You Coping With This Century? is an engine of parts that appear random, yet purrs with cultured reliability.
