Maple Glider’s Tori Zietsch takes us track-by-track through her breathtakingly raw, cathartic, and vulnerable sophomore album ‘I Get into Trouble,’ a deeply intimate record whose ten soul-stirring songs ache from the inside out.
content warning: sexual assault
Stream: “Don’t Kiss Me” – Maple Glider
Don’t kiss me, my safety should not have to be earned. I was just a baby, until you made me into a lesson to be learned…
In a word, Maple Glider’s sophomore album aches.
The Melbourne-based singer/songwriter held nothing back when making I Get into Trouble, candidly spilling a trove of her innermost emotions and experiences into ten visceral songs that tug incessantly at the heartstrings – hitting us hard and inevitably leaving a mark, such that it hurts long after the music’s over. From biblical allegories on sexual assault and womanhood to brutally honest reflections on religion, sexuality, consent, shame, love, and more, I Get into Trouble is an intense inner reckoning and a cathartic release all in one: An intimate and diaristic album whose tender folk stylings and warm, emotive melodies can’t (and wouldn’t dare) conceal the beautiful, yet painfully raw vulnerability of its lyrics.
It’s not “easy” listening, but it’s a damn good listen – and a journey worth embarking on, as much for the stunning music as for the meaning, the messages, and the intent behind these soul-stirring songs.
What age do you like me the best?
Right before I put you to the test?
Back when I absorbed everything you said?
What age do you like me the best?
Don’t kiss me
My safety should not have to be earned
I was just a baby
Until you made me into a lesson to be learned
Sometimes my own body doesn’t feel like my body
But definitely don’t kiss me
Sometimes my own body doesn’t feel like my body
But definitеly don’t kiss me
– “Don’t Kiss Me,” Maple Glider
Released October 13, 2023 via Partisan Records / Pieater, I Get Into Trouble is the spine-tingling, shiver-inducing sophomore album from fast-rising Australian artist Maple Glider. The moniker for Melbourne’s Tori Zietsch, Maple Glider first came into our lives over two years ago when she released her Tom Iansek (#1 Dads, Big Scary)-produced debut album To Enjoy Is the Only Thing, a gorgeous record full of emotive lyrics and warm folk melodies that tickled the ears and soothed the soul.
Made with the same team as her debut, I Get Into Trouble is, for Zietsch, both a continuation of where her first album left off, as well as a magnification, or “opening up,” of its themes, stories, and sonics.
“I started recording this album in November 2021 with Tom Iansek and Jim Rindfleish,” Zietsch tells Atwood Magazine. “We recorded on and off over the space of a year, and the songs I think very much reflect that. I Get Into Trouble is basically a continuation of my first record, To Enjoy is the Only Thing, which was released in June of 2021. Thematically, the album is quite similar, though I Get Into Trouble delves a lot deeper. The songs are very personal – I write about my religious upbringing, relationships, shame, sex, and disconnection.”
“We were coming out of our final lockdown when we started recording this album. It had been two years! I did not feel like I had a strong vision, I was quite flat. I knew I wanted to record songs that felt challenging to me personally. That started a huge journey! Very thankful to Tom Iansek for being an amazing collaborator and producer and bringing in so many ideas, and to Jim Rindfleish also for his incredible drumming and insight into the record.”
“I think it’s really just a continuation of the last record, but perhaps a bit more raw and exposed,” she adds. “It’s maybe not always going to be a comfortable record to listen to, but I think musically and content-wise it’s more open, and a bit more playful, which feels nice.”
It feels to me like there are so many options for where Maple Glider can go from here.
The album’s title “I Get Into Trouble” is a biblical reference.
“When I was a kid I was taught a children’s version of a bible story about a woman named Dinah, who is sexually assaulted,” she explains. “This version of the story states that the assault is Dinah’s fault because she was associating with people who don’t believe in the same God that she does. When her brother murders her attacker, Dinah is blamed again, for the same reason. It explains that if she didn’t associate with those people, she wouldn’t have been assaulted and her brother would not have needed to commit murder. The story also goes on to say that the only reason the assault is wrong is because Dinah and her attacker are not married. The story is called ‘Dinah Gets Into Trouble.’”
I observed these ideas being reinforced through my childhood raised in religion from a very young age.
Zietsch grew up in a religious Christian family; songwriting, for her, is as much a means of self-expression as it is a source of therapy, helping her process parts of her childhood and understand what they mean to her now. Dinah’s story is one of many that she unpacks and delves into with a critical, poetic lens – trying to untangle the ways in which our society sexualizes women from an early age and forces them to shoulder the weight of others’ actions. (At this time, I can’t help but be reminded of an ugly situation that arose on my university’s campus, where a police officer told an assault victim that she shouldn’t have been wearing such “provocative clothing,” and that if she had dressed differently, maybe she wouldn’t have been assaulted. She was simply wearing a dress.)
Many artists speak out against the ways in which misogyny is woven into the fabric of our society and deeply embedded into our cultural values, but few sing with as much intensity and fragility as Maple Glider.
She introduced her new album’s release earlier this year with lead single (and Atwood Editor’s Pick) “Dinah” – yes, the same Dinah. The song, placed track two on I Get into Trouble (after the gut-wrenching, scene-setting, enchanting folk-pop album opener “Do You”), is an empowering record reflecting so much of what remains broken in our world: The ways in which religious texts and other traditions and stories dictate how we understand women – their bodies, their identities, their very existence – in society. At the heart of this song is this disturbance instilled in Zietsch from an early age; one that she finally felt ready to unleash on the world. Doing so feels like a challenge to those longstanding structures, giving us a glimmer of hope that we can change the narrative, reclaim voices that need to be reclaimed, and reframe how we understand ourselves, how we as a society view and treat women, minorities, and more:
I met Dinah at the Bible study
when I was eight years old
She was just a story to them,
but to me she was more than they told
They said “Be God fearing,
don’t be messing with those non-believing”
So I’ve been in the church
making sure no one’s looking up my skirt
But I do not feel safe here,
I wanna feel alive
Do you thrive knowing
that our God favours you over me dear?
I’ve been in the church making sure no one’s looking up my skirt, but I do not feel safe here…
“For me, ‘Dinah’ is the scariest thing I’ve ever put out,” Zietsch confessed around the song’s release this July. “It’s probably the most pop feeling song I’ve released, but it’s really quite an angry song. I have felt incredibly disturbed and frustrated and sad in the process of writing and putting it together.”
I want to know, does it make you proud?
In an escalated version of self-consciousness
I wonder, do you see me now?
Do you see me now?
Don’t kiss me
My safety should not have to be earned
I was just a baby
Until you made me into a lesson to be learned
Sometimes my own body doesn’t feel like my body
But definitely don’t kiss me
Sometimes my own body doesn’t feel like my body
But definitely don’t kiss me
– “Don’t Kiss Me,” Maple Glider
Maple Glider continues to move our ears and hearts as I Get into Trouble progresses; standouts include the breathtakingly raw consent anthem “Don’t Kiss Me,” the emotionally-charged, yearning-fueled ballads “You At The Top Of The Driveway” and “For You And All The Songs We Loved” (both heavy-hearted and full of aching), and the brutally honest “Surprises” – a song that, by all accounts (though she hasn’t explicitly said it, to this writer’s knowledge), seems to recall the painful details of her own assault experience:
In your room, Auchenflower claimed a new bloom
And I still had a video of you singing on my phone
But by then, you had both tried to get on in
Till I was crying on your steps, humiliated by your friеnd
I wonder if you knew
What you werе going to do?
Surprises, surprises
Work just like they should
You got me real good
You took something that you could
You took something that you could
You took something that you could not give back again
It’s odd to say
You were just a stranger,
a stranger that I had met that day
I wonder if you knew
that you would be bringing me years of shame
You were just a stranger, a stranger I met…
– “Surprises,” Maple Glider
“This is an incredibly visceral song for me, with strong images and feelings still attached,” Zietsch shares. “I wrote this song on piano, and at the beginning of production it was going to be a much bigger song. I went home from recording one day and began to re-write the song to be performed with just vocals and acoustic guitar. I didn’t want to shadow anything.”
“Surprises” may be one of the most deep-diving Maple Glider songs yet; it’s one of a few personal highlights for the artist, who truly put her all into bringing this album, and every individual song, to life. Listening to I Get into Trouble from start to finish, one gets the sense that Zietsch only releases a song if it carries a piece of her soul, like a horcrux.
“‘Don’t Kiss Me’ has felt amazing to perform live, especially with my band,” Zietsch says, reflecting on her own favorite songs. “I also love ‘You’re Gonna Be A Daddy’ as I feel like it’s had a really positive impact on my personal life.”
“You’re Gonna Be a Dadddy” is also home to Zietsch’s favorite lyric: “I want to be the cool aunty like I am to my best friend’s dog,” “because it makes me think of my beautiful niece, one of my best friends, and her adorable pup Flo. I love them all a lot.”
Again, I Get into Trouble is not “easy listening,” but it is important listening. Its songs ache with emotion, and all of them beg for repeat listens.
There’s a lot to unpack, and a lot to love on this record.
“I hope that for people that connect with some of the themes on the record, that they find comfort in the songs and that the album is a warm and safe space for exploring any emotions that may arise,” Zietsch shares. “Alternatively, I hope that people just vibe with the sound and enjoy chilling with it. Personally I feel like I’ve lived so much during the creation and release of the record. I’ve felt all the feelings and tried my darned best. I think I’ve exited the release having ditched a lot of anxiety and fear, and I feel more settled being the musician that I am.”
Experience the full record via our below stream, and peek inside Maple Glider’s I Get into Trouble with Atwood Magazine as Tori Zietsch takes us track-by-track through the music and lyrics of her sophomore album!
— —
:: stream/purchase I Get into Trouble here ::
:: connect with Maple Glider here ::
Stream: ‘I Get into Trouble’ – Maple Glider
:: Inside I Get into Trouble ::
— —
Do You
For me this song holds the feeling of being frustrated by someone who refuses to see who you are, no matter how much you put yourself in front of them, until eventually, you retreat. It’s also about the self-obsession that can come as a result of that, the fixation on identity, complicated feelings of inadequacy, and the search for meaning and significance in failing relationships. As always, there are many sides to the sphere, the ball just keeps spinning.
Dinah
content warning: This song refers to a Bible story I learned as a kid about a woman who is sexually assaulted and victim blamed. The story goes on to say that what happened is wrong because the pair were unmarried, and that it wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for her spending time with people who do not worship the same god- like her daddy told her not to.
I observed these ideas being reinforced through my childhood raised in religion from a very young age.
Two Years
I remember having the need to write this song at the moment I was experiencing these uncertain feelings, but being unable to do so in private. Instead, I wrote another song, about another person’s life, drawing very much from my own experience. This was a time of life where I got swept up into the clouds, and didn’t feel the ground for a long time. Even listening to the song now I can feel the self-doubt in my lyrics, the indecision in the music, the attempt to find the sweetness amongst what was ultimately an incredibly claustrophobic experience.
FOMO
A series of lonely holidays: Birthdays, Christmas, New Years. Bored, broke, unhappy and reminiscing about a different life. Some sun may have helped, haha. It was not a sexy time!
Don’t Kiss Me
content warning: I didn’t think much of this song when I wrote it. I had a terrible recording of it on my voice memos where I wailed out of key, and it got buried somewhere in there for two years or so before I uncovered it again. I felt so connected and ready for it when I found it again that I started playing it regularly at shows. It’s a song about consent, and the experience of being predated on by older men as a girl and young woman. I think many of us are aware of that strong urge to say “f off” and be let to our own.
You At The Top Of The Driveway
I wrote this song and ‘You’re Gonna Be A Daddy’ together as part one and two when I found out I was going to be an aunty for the first time. I experienced an urgent feeling of wanting to be near her, and imagined all the things we’d be able to do together, in the same places where my brother and I grew up.
You’re Gonna Be A Daddy
This is one of the first songs I wrote coming out of our seventh lockdown. It was the first full song I’d really written in probably a year. It was Summer, and I wrote a lot of it sitting in the backyard under the mulberry tree. I was having all sorts of considerations about my place in the world and what I am doing here, and I was searching for the things/people that hold importance to me.
For You And All The Songs We Loved
Another Summertime song, a two-chord verse, a promise to myself to write a simple song. Remembering times in the backyard, writing poems, listening to music, having deep life chats. A particular time when life felt full of possibility, nothing was fixed, and I was unafraid to feel love, let it go and ride through the sadness. Music has such a beautiful way of allowing us space to feel things together, so it’s a bit of a love song to that.
Surprises
This is an incredibly visceral song for me, with strong images and feelings still attached. I wrote this song on piano, and at the beginning of production it was going to be a much bigger song. I went home from recording one day and began to re-write the song to be performed with just vocals and acoustic guitar. I didn’t want to shadow anything.
Scream
This is a lockdown song. I wrote in the night time, unable to sleep. To me it’s kind of an unsettled lullaby, a longing to be with the people I love.
— —
:: stream/purchase I Get into Trouble here ::
:: connect with Maple Glider here ::
— — — —
Connect to Maple Glider on
Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, Instagram
Discover new music on Atwood Magazine
© Bridgette Winten
© Bridgette Winten:: Stream Maple Glider ::
