The 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.