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Stream SFV Acid’s Cheerful Breakup Album ‘Amber’s Stuff’

SFV Acid, 'Amber's Stuff' (UNO NYC)

SFV Acid‘s Amber’s Stuff is pretty chill for a breakup album. There is no wailing, no rending of garments, no raging against the dying of the light; just slick digital synths, rippling drum programming, and a sublimated hint of acid house at its most innocent. Like The Dwell, Zane Reynolds’ last album under the SFV Acid alias — those initials are short for his home, the San Fernando Valley — Amber’s Stuff sounds like an attempt to make peace with artifice. This one may not have been recorded at a local Starbucks, as was the case with The Dwell, but it’s nevertheless waxy as a fake palm tree and clean-lined as a strip mall, and it glows with the steady radiance of a tanning bed.

In fact, we only know that it’s a breakup album because the press release tells us that it was “written & recorded in the weeks after the split with an ex, Amber.” John Donne himself couldn’t have come up with a more poetic (or ironic) conceit: This album may have allowed Reynolds to move on, but as a result, the former object of his affection remains forever frozen in the record’s title — like, well, a bug in amber.

Who knows how Amber feels about that (or whether she ever got her stuff back), but at least the rest of us will always have the quirky, quixotic, and not-at-all-melancholic pleasures of songs like “Cheddar Mercedes,” “Pink iPhone,” and “Vanilla Musk.” Amber’s Stuff is out April 29 on UNO NYC; it’s available for pre-order now on Bandcamp. Stream the full album below.