SPILL EP PREMIERE: EDDIE SKULLER – BLIND LOVE

EDDIE SKULLER – BLIND LOVE

A SPILL EXCLUSIVE EP PREMIERE

Eddie Skuller has spent years building a career, but remains a hidden gem of the USA’s North-East. A veteran of the New York–New Jersey music scene, he brings a seasoned performer’s instincts and an unforced emotional clarity to Blind Love, a four-track EP devoted to the songwriting of Tom Waits. Rather than simply reproducing familiar material, Skuller uses these songs as a vehicle for his own voice and sensibility, drawing out their darker romanticism, vulnerability and underlying hope. Skuller treats the material with such tender, lived-in reverence that Tom Waits himself would be honored.

Recorded live to tape at The Chicken Shack in upstate New York with producer Nick Kinsey, Blind Love captures an artist whose years of experience have prepared him for a moment when a much wider audience may discover what longtime listeners already know. Kinsey, known for his work with Kevin Morby, Waxahatchee and Scott McMickey, is a natural fit as producer, bringing the warmth and analog aesthetic Skuller was seeking. The lack of edits or vocal overdubs preserves the spontaneity of musicians responding to one another in the room. There is also a fitting piece of Waits lore surrounding the location: Waits is said to have recorded Mule Variations in another converted chicken shack on the opposite coast.

The title track, “Blind Love,” establishes the EP’s emotional center. Skuller finds the humanity inside Waits’ portrait of longing, allowing the song’s darker edges to remain intact while emphasizing its vulnerability. His distinctive voice gives the performance a raw, analog character, while the restrained arrangement keeps the focus on the emotional weight of the lyrics. Ryder Cooley of Dust Bowl Faeries adds mournful accordion, with Kinsey’s drums and keyboards, Jack Skuller‘s guitars and Jeremy Chatzky’s bass providing an organic foundation.

“Downtown Train” demonstrates particularly well what Skuller brings to Waits’ material. Rather than leaning into the song’s familiarity, he lowers the emotional temperature and lets its longing breathe. The performance highlights the gentler side of Waits’ songwriting, where grit gives way to reflection and romantic yearning becomes something quieter and more vulnerable. It feels lived-in rather than performed for effect, with Skuller finding his own emotional connection to a song that has already had many lives.

That emotional excavation continues with “House Where Nobody Lives,” perhaps the EP’s most affecting performance. Skuller treats the song almost like poetry set to music, allowing its imagery and loneliness to accumulate gradually. His delivery is understated without becoming detached, finding tenderness beneath the desolation. Kinsey’s production is particularly effective here: the warmth and slight imperfections of the tape recording give the performance a physical presence, making the spaces between the instruments feel as significant as the notes themselves.

The EP closes with “You Can Never Hold Back Spring” – an apt conclusion to a collection concerned with loss but ultimately drawn toward renewal. Skuller captures the song’s optimism without tipping into sentimentality. His performance feels like quiet reassurance rather than grand declaration, bringing the project’s emotional journey to a natural close. As Skuller himself explains, the four songs share a melancholy rooted in lost love and desire but ultimately resolve toward the possibility of a positive future. That underlying sense of hope is what binds the EP together.

Much of Blind Love’s character comes from the musicians surrounding Skuller. Ryder’s accordion brings an old-world ache to the arrangements, Nick Kinsey contributes drums and keyboards as well as producing, Jack Skuller supplies the guitars, and veteran bassist Jeremy Chatzky (whose credits include work with Bruce Springsteen, Steve Earle and Ronnie Spector) provides a quietly assured foundation.

The project’s visual world extends that collaborative spirit. The music video for “You Can Never Hold Back Spring” is a collaboration with French collective SPX ETC, for which artists Sandrine Pagnoux and Sophie Etchart combined various media, including collage, illustration, photography, typography and animation. The association grew out of Pagnoux’s Tom Waits editorial for 46pgs magazine, adding another layer of interpretation to a project involving the discovery of new ways to celebrate familiar material.

Skuller’s experience as an interpreter of other artists’ work extends beyond this EP. He is a perennial guest vocalist with The Losers Lounge, the acclaimed tribute series curated by Joe McGinty of The Psychedelic Furs and regularly presented at Joe’s Pub and City Winery in New York City. That background is evident in his approach here: he understands that a compelling tribute is less about reproducing an original performance than discovering what the material can reveal through another voice.

What makes Blind Love so successful is that Skuller never treats these songs as museum pieces. With Kinsey’s warm, instinctive production and the understated contributions of his cohorts, he finds a space between faithful interpretation and personal reinvention. The live-to-tape recording gives the performances an immediacy that suits Waits’ deeply human writing, while Skuller’s distinctive voice brings its own emotional vocabulary to the material. The result is a tribute that feels sincere without being reverential, familiar without being derivative — a record that understands the enduring power of these songs precisely because it allows them to become something new.

While you are here, enjoy his latest French-produced video:

Eddie Skuller
Blind Love
(Independent)
Release Date: August 26, 2026

Artist Links

Background Photo Credit: Eddie Skuller & SPX ETC