True to their name-cum-mission-statement, Toronto outfit Absolutely Free have always seemed like a band liberated from stricture and pressure—whether it’s the gradually mutational nature of their extended kosmiche odysseys, or the relaxed pace at which they’ve released them over the past two years. But the first tease from the band’s full-length debut, produced by Fucked Up’s Mike Haliechuk, shows them capable of shoehorning their psychedelic sprawl into standard pop-song parameters without sacrificing their adventurous ethos or widescreened vision.-=-=-=-

"Beneath the Air" reroutes the circular drum pattern of the Beatles' "Tomorrow Never Knows" away from strobe-lit acid-trip nocturnalia toward break-of-day, sunshine splendor. The ever-entranced Matt King sounds like he’s singing the song’s helium-laced melody from inside the same shaken-up snowglobe where Dan Snaith recorded Caribou’s Beach-buoyed Andorra. But more than a pastiche of ‘60s signifiers, "Beneath the Air" swells into a deliriously disorienting surge—rather than hearkening back to a specific time, it makes you lose all sense of it.

[from Absolutely Free out 10/14 on Lefse]