Splendid Engine - These Songs Will Destroy Us

Splendid Engine is the brainchild of Matt Cheplic, frontman for the folk-pop indie band The Bitter Chills. With this new project, Cheplic took his classic, melody-driven approach to songwriting and enlivened it with more ambitious production and modern, electro indie-pop textures. The songs also delve into a main ingredient of The Bitter Chills — folk elements that recall Mumford & Sons or The Lumineers — but with a layered, atmospheric quality.

Over the course of a year, Cheplic worked out of Mint 400 Records‘ studio – The Forest Of Chaos in Hawthorne, NJ with producer/Mint 400 Records owner Neil Sabatino to flesh out these tracks, often stacking numerous melodies, percussion parts, acoustic instruments, and various loops and samples. Particularly creative touches, like employing a marching band drum line and beating a washing machine with percussion mallets, give These Songs Will Destroy Us some unique touches. Overall, the album displays elements of the last 60 years but veers into something new and compelling.