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For immediate release:
June 24, 2022
CHARLIE BURG
ANNOUNCES DEBUT LP
INFINITELY TALL
DUE OUT AUGUST 19
PRE-ORDER THE LP NOW
& SHARES NEW SINGLE + VIDEO,
"CHICAGO (TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT)"
OUT NOW VIA FADER LABEL
LISTEN HERE | WATCH HERE
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"Brimming with effervescent energy, the rising sensation partners layers of soothing guitar melodies with country-tinged vocals for a modern-pop tune." | |
"Combining the intellectualism of Vampire Weekend and the raw danceability of Toro y Moi, Burg is certainly an artist to keep your eyes on." | |
"Pairing vocals reminiscent of early-Ezra Koenig with a lo-fi indie-folk framework, Burg realises that homespun original is truest to song’s intimate subject matter." | |
"His music has an effortlessness to it, as though he’s just sat down one day and out its flowed, straight from the heart. He just gets it." | |
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Today, Brooklyn-based, Metro-Detroit-bred singer-songwriter, Charlie Burg, announces his debut LP, Infinitely Tall, available for pre-order now. Along with the long-awaited album announcement, Burg brings a new single that evokes the way true friendship feels, "Chicago (Take It Or Leave It)," out everywhere now along with its accompanying pizza parlor-set video, via FADER Label.
Infinitely Tall, the 15 track LP, is told in three chapters, each tied to a specific place–from his childhood house in Detroit, to college in Syracuse, and now, life in New York City. The project explores the various spaces in one's life that may make, break, shape and uplift, using lush soundscapes that blend genres and transcend location, age, space and time. The album was produced by Mike Malchicoff, who has worked with Bo Burnham, Niall Horan, Kids See Ghosts and King Princess.
Speaking to the chapter book structure of the album, Burg's goal was to design a body of work that mirrored the stages of his own life and the places that have shaped him throughout his life thus far, Burg explains, "I formatted this album in a three-chapter layout, with each group of five songs representing a different space in my life. The first is representative of the dreamlike nostalgia of one’s hometown; the second embodies a college house and the free spirit and recklessness of young adulthood; the third is city life, an ejection from youth into adulthood, and the endlessness that stretches out before you in the smoky urban expanses."
On the debut record, Charlie Burg says, "The album is a reflection on spaces – namely houses – and the ways that we are shaped by our physical surroundings. "Infinitely Tall" is a phrase from the final track of the album which was born out of a jam session with my friend Rebecca in my hometown years ago. As I reflected on the concept of the album that phrase accurately encapsulated the feeling I had when thinking about home. We might change. Home might change. But some things never die."
Previous releases have caught the attention of countless major tastemakers, including Matt Wilksinson of Beats 1, who premiered "Channel Orange In Your Living Room," says the single is Burg's "most self-assured track yet." Burg has also been included on Spotify heavy-hitter playlists like Lorem, Pollen and Fresh Finds, among others. Over the span of his recent releases, Burg has received a slew of support from Wonderland, NME, DORK, Ones to Watch and many more. Already a touring veteran at age 25, Burg has hit the road with the likes of Ashe, Jeremy Zucker, and Moonchild, with an ever-growing list of accomplishments showing no signs of slowing down. Plus, April and May 2022 saw sold out shows for Burg from LA's Troubadour to New York's Bowery Ballroom, complete with a crowd surf to "Dancing Through the Mental Breakdown" here.
The latest track from Burg, "Chicago (Take It or Leave It)," sounds like running into an old friend, or a former flame. There's a sweet timelessness it exists in, carried by a smooth electric guitar and sweet, soulful vocals. Describing its origin, Burg explains, "I wrote and recorded this song in my house in Syracuse in Spring 2019, right around the time I graduated college. I had my best friends drive out from Michigan, and we set up recording gear in every room of the house so we could capture the sound of the rooms and walls." While on most of the forthcoming album Burg plays the majority, if not all of the instruments, this track features his own friends on the track, exuding a true atmosphere of friendship and connection. Burg continues, "Being one of the few songs on the record where I do not play all the instruments, I wanted the feeling of community and friendship I share with my friends to be tangible in the recording. Although it was recorded in Syracuse, I decided to place it in the first 5-song “chapter” of the album, as it reflects the kind of uninhibited freedom of expression and innocence that I feel was lost when I left school and entered the next stage of adulthood."
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Along with the track comes an accompanying video set in a pizza parlor, directed by Jabari Canada and edited by Wesley Sanchez (Lil Nas X, The Kid Laroi) where Burg plays a lonely pizza shop employee, carefully constructing everything from the pizza box, to each ingredient of the pie. When complete, he hand-delivers the box to an anonymous doorstep to reveal the physical record sitting inside the box to conclude the video. An ode to the creative process rather than the final product, and his love of pizza, Burg explains with the video, "I wanted to allude to the meticulousness and poignancy of the album creation process, while maintaining a lighthearted atmosphere. I also love pizza." Canada adds, "He’s a talented multi-instrumentalist who brought the same level of care and dedication to the music video process that an artist usually reserves for their music production. “Chicago” was a fun song to make a video for, and its catchy hook easily got stuck in my head days after the shoot. I hope the viewers find as much joy watching the video as we did when creating it."
The new single follows the recently released indie-rock-inspired "Break The Rhythm," and its accompanying video, that kicks off the album's second chapter and catches Burg in the midst of a tour. Feeling unbound to anything and forced to confront change as he outgrows his childhood, the track sees Burg wrestling with more existential thoughts and questions in search of what home might now look like now that his childhood home is in the rearview mirror.
With the forthcoming Infinitely Tall, and today's "Chicago (Take It Or Leave It)" Charlie Burg establishes himself as one of the most promising young singer-songwriter's of his generation. Layered, cinematic and his most realized work yet, the LP is the vehicle through which Burg redefines what home might look like as he makes his way through his twenties, away from the homes he once knew. "Chicago (Take It Or Leave It)" is out everywhere now, and the vivid 15-track album, Infinitely Tall, is available for pre-order now and due out August 19 via FADER Label. Connect with Charlie on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube for more on the rising musician.
|  | Artwork credit: Matthew Weinberger | Download hi-res single artwork | |
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Painting: Charlie Burg / Editing: Corinne Ferman
Download hi-res album artwork
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Infinitely Tall Tracklisting (LP)
- The Haus Lives Forever
- 97 Avalon
- Chicago (Take It Or Leave It)
- Summer Moon
- The Five-Month Song
- Break The Rhythm
- Dancing Through The Mental Breakdown
- Ooh! Sumthin' New
- Your Friends Not Mine
- Blue Wave Blues
- Gold Sounds 3am
- A Comet Over Bandemer
- Callback
- Belarusian Baby
- Infinitely Tall
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Charlie Burg Bio:
Where were you the first time you heard Charlie Burg’s Infinitely Tall? Or, rather — where will you be? What does that place mean to you? Hopefully it’s somewhere special.
Infinitely Tall is about spaces — the ones that make, break, shape, and uplift us. The debut album from the Metro Detroit, Michigan-born singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, takes place across three chapters, each tied to a specific, precious locale: Chapter One in Charlie’s childhood home in Detroit; Chapter Two in Syracuse, at Charlie’s beloved college house; and Chapter Three in the vast expanses of New York City. Each chapter is its own gorgeous, rose-tinted paean to home, or the feeling of home, wherever it may lie.
Infinitely Tall marks a shift for Charlie. Across this album’s 15 generous, skyward-looking songs, he augments his bedrock of lo-fi soul and lush indie-pop with piquant, arresting new textures: the forward motion of driving post-punk, sparkling electronic abrasion, the melodic grip of romantic 90s indie-rock. Marrying the golden-era perfectionism of his early music with an enticing new fondness for chaos, the entirety of Charlie’s musical outlook comes to the fore here. “My whole life I've been reticent to give something my all, so for the project I spared none of my instincts,” he says. “I knew I had to take a crack at something ambitious.”
Perhaps ‘ambitious’ undersells it. These songs are rich and cinematic, bristling with the rush of old sense-memories recalled. Take, for example, “97 Avalon”, the vivid first single from Infinitely Tall, a future slow-dance classic led by one of Charlie’s most sublime vocals to date. Inspired by the white 1997 Toyota Avalon that Charlie shared with his twin brother growing up, it’s a perfect vignette rendered in song. “Every verse is a different drive in that automobile, one year later than the last verse,” says Charlie. “In the end, all you can do is be filled with love for what you know.”
Similarly evocative are “Break The Rhythm” and “Dancing Thru The Mental Breakdown”, two indie rock-influenced tracks that find Charlie deftly unpacking rootlessness and toxic social media culture. Landing somewhere between Randy Newman and Guided By Voices, each track is uniquely, profoundly Charlie, the former written in the midst of his first tour — and capturing all the ambiguity that entails — and the latter “a sardonic denunciation of my own ego and a sharp tongued commentary on the social fabric in which a modern musician is forced to partake in.”
All of this is to say: Charlie’s first music since 2020, and first body of work since 2019, has been worth the wait. Dazzling and teeming with life, Infinitely Tall is a surprising, wide-reaching next chapter for one of this generation’s most promising young songwriters, and the perfect collection to lead into a world tour taking place in the latter half of 2022. Built from the ground up, it’s an ode to home that, hopefully, feels like a home for you — wherever you may be.
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