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On Childish Things, Erich Russek and Poets in Heat take the stories we thought we knew — Rapunzel, Humpty Dumpty, Chicken Little — and strip them down to their bones, only to rebuild them as warnings, elegies, and protest anthems. The result is a six-track EP that plays like a fairytale crime scene, where the innocence of childhood collides with the brutal clarity of adulthood.

Russek, known for his wry spoken-word delivery and taste for poetic confrontation, doesn’t sing so much as narrate a descent. Over grooves that range from swampy funk to ambient noir, he introduces us to fractured archetypes and collapsed kingdoms. Sleeping Beauty isn’t waiting for love — she’s a population sedated by propaganda. Chicken Little isn’t paranoid — he’s the only one paying attention.

The production across Childish Things is restrained but deeply intentional: grooves pulse, atmospheres hum, and silence speaks just as loudly as rhythm. There’s a sense that each track was built like a stage — one where Russek steps forward, not to perform, but to testify.

Highlights include the hypnotic “Say My Name (Rumpelstiltskin)”, a track that pulses with tension even in its instrumental form, and “Froggie Went A Courtin,” a warped folk tale turned political satire where the wedding march sounds suspiciously like the end of the world. But the EP’s emotional core may lie in “Once a Heart is Broken (Humpty’s Defeat),” a sorrow-drenched meditation on emotional ruin that transforms nursery tragedy into raw confessional poetry.

Childish Things isn’t nostalgic — it’s revelatory. It asks what happens when the stories we grew up on no longer fit the world we live in. And it answers with art that’s haunting, intelligent, and unflinchingly human.

Erich Russek and Poets in Heat
From the EP Childish Things (May 28, 2025)

In Once a Heart is Broken, Erich Russek and Poets in Heat deliver a quiet gut-punch — a sorrow-soaked meditation on damage that can’t be undone. Told in sparse, poetic stanzas, the song weaves the aftermath of heartbreak with the surreal fallout of fairytale failure, casting Humpty Dumpty not as a punchline, but as a tragic symbol of emotional ruin.

Russek’s signature spoken-word style feels especially intimate here — subdued, vulnerable, and resolute. He doesn’t raise his voice. He doesn’t need to. The weight of the lines carries itself.

There’s no rescue coming. No cavalry. Just someone frying in the sun after a fall no one bothered to stop — and the silent reckoning that follows.

As part of Childish Things — a collection of songs that reframes childhood stories through an adult, often brutal lens — Once a Heart is Broken stands as its most personal and quietly devastating track.

Erich Russek and Poets in Heat
From the album Childish Things (May 28, 2025)

In Say My Name (Rumpelstiltskin), Erich Russek and Poets in Heat reimagine the ancient folktale as a psychological duel between power and vulnerability, good and evil, self and shadow. Anchored by a hypnotic groove, the track becomes a dark conversation — or perhaps a confession — unfolding in the space between temptation and identity.

The narrator asks: Am I a good man living inside the bad, or a bad man hiding in the good? What follows is a seduction wrapped in riddles — a promise to spin pain into gold, with just one condition: say the name.

The chorus pulses like a spell: Say my name. Play my game. But the real tension lies in the question behind it — what happens when you do?

With its restrained arrangement and lyrical intensity, Say My Name casts Rumpelstiltskin not as a villain, but as a mirror — one that reflects what we’re willing to trade for power, escape, or the illusion of control.

Erich Russek and Poets in Heat
From the album Childish Things (May 28, 2025)

In Froggie Went A Courtin, Erich Russek and Poets in Heat take the centuries-old folk tune and drag it through a backwoods fever dream — turning a playful children’s song into a grooving, gothic satire of power, ritual, and absurdity.

Over a slinky, swamp-soaked arrangement, Russek delivers each verse with theatrical precision and a sly undercurrent of menace. The animals of the original story — frogs, mice, wedding guests — become stand-ins for a society that marches blindly through tradition while the foundations crumble beneath them.

Part surreal storytelling, part critique of our political theater, Froggie leans into discomfort, humor, and groove in equal measure. It’s a wedding song for a world on the brink, equal parts funeral dirge and carnival ride.

As part of Childish Things — an album that reimagines nursery rhymes and folklore as commentaries on the modern condition — Froggie Went A Courtin stands out as both absurd and eerily relevant.

From the album Childish Things (May 28, 2025)

Sleeping Beauty isn’t under a spell — she’s under surveillance. And no one gets out with their eyes closed.

On Sleeping Beauty, Erich Russek and Poets in Heat strip the fairytale to its bones and rebuild it as a modern folk lament, soaked in political fog and poetic defiance. Told in Dylan-esque stanzas, the lyrics unfold like verses of a dream you’re not sure you want to wake from — one where kingdoms collapse, kings rise, and lies bloom like vines.

Beauty isn’t just a woman in a bed — she’s a symbol for a sleeping society, lulled by disinformation, abandoned ideals, and a sandman who delivers not rest, but ridicule. The song doesn’t whisper “once upon a time.” It declares: Wake up. Open your eyes. They’re lying to you — and it’s working.

Musically restrained and vocally deliberate, Sleeping Beauty walks the line between folk ballad and spoken prophecy, with a chorus that reads like a revolution just beginning to stir.

Erich Russek and Poets in Heat
From the album Childish Things (May 28, 2025)

On The Sky Will Fall (Chicken Little), Erich Russek and Poets in Heat take the well-worn children’s fable and reframe it as a low-burning prophecy. Over a minimalist, march-like groove, Russek delivers his signature spoken-word vocals with eerie restraint — more town crier than frontman, chronicling a world on the edge of collapse.

The track draws a straight, unsettling line between fairytale hysteria and modern crises: climate anxiety, media saturation, and digital dread. It doesn’t shout. It simmers. And in doing so, it becomes one of the album’s most quietly confrontational moments.

Part of Childish Things — a record that reimagines nursery tales for a fractured world — this piece uses poetic repetition and pointed understatement to challenge the listener: What if Chicken Little was right all along?

A surreal, groove-forward fairytale turned sideways, Let Down Your Hair reimagines Rapunzel not as a trapped princess but as a dystopian symbol of control, resistance, and surveillance. The track fuses art rock and funk, led by a tightly coiled rhythm and layered with spoken-word vocals that sound both intimate and ominous.

Erich’s delivery is sarcastic, seductive, and unsettling — like someone reading bedtime stories through a static-filled intercom in the middle of a societal collapse. His voice walks the line between prophet and provocateur.

The title line becomes a loaded command: Let down your hair isn’t a request for connection — it’s a metaphor for exposure, vulnerability, power, and maybe even programming. As the groove deepens, the song transforms from narrative to warning, like a fable rewritten by someone who knows what happens after the storybook closes.

A slow-grooving, cinematic portrait of displacement, Living in Our Cars (Pt. 1) captures what it means to survive at the edge of the system with nothing but a vehicle, a voice, and a signal. Erich’s spoken-word English verses paint a world of quiet rebellion and worn-down resilience — where people live out of their cars, not just because they have to, but because it’s the last place that’s still theirs.

The female voice on the radio, speaking in Spanish, delivers philosophical fragments, emotional cautions, and cryptic wisdom — including a reference to Wittgenstein’s famous line: “If one cannot speak, one must be silent.” These transmissions float through the mix like signals from another realm — maternal, distant, maybe divine.

Wordless female vocalizations weave in and out, acting as a ghostly counterpoint — a reminder of something tender and human within the asphalt exile. The chorus, deceptively simple and melodic, becomes a mantra for this new reality: Living in our cars with the radio on…