Charlie Burg shares debut album Infinitely Tall via FADER Label
His accompanying video for “Dancing Through The Mental Breakdown” captures a very specific millennial malaise.
Charlie Burg is a product of his micro-generation. On his debut LP Infinitely Tall, out today via FADER Label, the 25-year-old singer-songwriter’s crystalline countertenor adopts the inflections of Ezra Koenig, Adam Levine, and several other and soft rock singers who hit their strides in the mid and late aughts.
On “Dancing Through The Mental Breakdown,” he dons a slightly edgier persona more akin to the crossover emo acts that rose to commercial acclaim around the same time (and are currently in the midst of a critical renaissance). The mid-album track, which arrives alongside a visual treatment courtesy of Rachel Cabitt and Natalie Leonard, captures the very specific ennui of a Brooklyn transplant on the cusp of Generations Y and Z, though — mostly due to New York’s chokehold on the culture industry — it feels like a universal rite of passage.
The new track finds Burg singing in the second person to a rootless, angsty friend, breaking down the pitfalls of moving to Berlin (“you’ve never heard ‘ Autobahn’ front to back”) and “back home” (“you’ve hated your hometown since high school!”). Even dancing — in the traditional sense — through the mental breakdown would be ill-advised because “you know damn well you’ve got two left feet.” The solution: “Shake your ass / You don’t need feet for that.”
Watch the video for “Dancing Through The Mental Breakdown” and stream Infinitely Tall below.