Maple Glider

A singer-songwriter who draws on her deeply personal experience to craft rich, intimate folk rock, Melbourne/Naarm, Australia-based musician Tori Zietsch – who performs under the stage moniker Maple Glider – has mesmerised audiences with her sensuous, starkly tender sound. Zietsch poured her emotions into her stunning 2021 debut, ‚To Enjoy Is the Only Thing‘, a sparse and hypnotic record of melodic folk that drew critical acclaim both in Australia and overseas. Last year’s follow-up, ‚I Get Into Trouble‘, drew further raves for its dark tales and bracing vulnerability, wrapped up in the kind of sophisticated pop songcraft that has marked Zietsch as an artist in a class of her own.

Music has been an escape from a series of oppressive institutions: religion, enervating relationships, her own brain. Zietsch’s music has formed new pathways both literal and metaphorical; physical and neural, that have allowed her to step outside herself, and shake you-yes, you, the listener-by the hand.

Striking emotionality is at the centre of her performance, leaning into an intimacy that is achieved by way of deeply personal reflections and velvety melodic compositions. Vocals melt into layers of plucked acoustic guitar and lulling piano, drawing on the sombre styles of folk contemporaries with a stark tenderness and introspection that assumes the listener is inside her bedroom as she plays for herself.