HOW ARE YOU COPING WITH THIS CENTURY?

Vinyl LP pressing. 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 aeotherAE, 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.