Maple Glider joins the Partisan Records roster and shares "Good Thing" single and video.
Naarm/Melbourne-based singer-songwriter, Maple Glider, today announces her joining the Partisan Records roster (Laura Marling, Fela Kuti, IDLES, Fontaines D.C.) in partnership with the Australian label, Pieater. In celebration of this news, Maple Glider (A.K.A. Tori Ziestch) also shares a new single and video for "Good Thing" - a song born of that frozen and fretful time just before you’re going to hurt someone you have loved by leaving them.
Maple Glider's striking emotionality is at the centre of her performance, which opens with her light and velvety voice accompanied by a sparsely strummed guitar. She wastes no time in revealing the state of sadness she’s in, offering such tenderness and introspection that the listener feels as though they’re inside her bedroom as she plays for herself. Eschewing a traditional chorus, the repeated refrain is more a bookend to each verse. The emotional apex hits in verse three, turning the song into a spectral folk powerhouse with the revelation that she’s cutting ties before things turn sour.
Ziestch explains:
“I wrote this song out of a place of defeat. I was really heartbroken at this point, and very confused. I like the feeling of my independence and I think I was afraid of putting energy into the wrong people. Sometimes we make decisions out of fear and sometimes it’s because we know that it is the best decision to make. Those lines can get very blurry.”
The accompanying video was made with creative collaborator and housemate Bridgette Winten in the 5km radius around their Brunswick, Melbourne home (a limit due to Covid lockdown measures). Working with colour and contrast, and shot on Super 8, Maple Glider sweetly plays off her surroundings, whether it’s lush creek-beds or stark industrial wastelands.
“Good Thing” is the follow up to Maple Glider’s stunning debut single “As Tradition,” which caught the ears of NPR's All Songs Considered, triple j Unearthed and more.
After landing in Melbourne in her early 20s, Maple partnered up with her childhood friend, producer Daniel Pinkerton, forming the duo Seavera, pairing acoustic guitars and wonky uprights with dramatic electronics. They parted ways soon after releasing an EP in early 2018, with Ziestch moving to the musical seaside town of Brighton, UK. It was there she began to work on solo material drawing from experiences falling in and out of love, traveling extensively, writing non-stop, and basking in the lengthy European summer hours.
She returned to Melbourne late 2019 with a SoundCloud account full to capacity of demo uploads. Zietsch enlisted Tom Iansek (Big Scary, #1 Dads, The Paper Kites, Hockey Dad) to produce and record some of the many, many songs she was ready to get down from which "As Tradition" and "Good Thing" were born.
“Good Thing” by Maple Glider is out now on Partisan Records, buy/stream it here.