Maple Glider Makes Her Partisan Records Debut With “Good Thing”

Maple Glider’s new song, “Good Thing”—out today and featured below—is equally beautiful and devastating.

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In the track, Maple Glider, a.k.a. Melbourne singer-songwriter Tori Zietsch, wills herself to say goodbye from an important relationship in her life. “I guess that’s how we learn / by setting fire to things that bring us life  / before we’ve got to watch them burn,” Zietsch sings in the song’s climax, her voice swelling to a deep, raspy, full-throated cry. “And so I’ll say goodbye / because I’d rather kill a good thing / than wait for it to die.”

By the end of the track, Zietsch’s voice barely registers above an acoustic guitar part. This faint, flickering outro is a callback to the song’s faint, flickering intro, but here it feels like the calm after the storm—the aftermath of a reckoning. Throughout the track, Zietsch sings with the range and smokiness of Julia Jacklin or Haley Blais, a Vancouver singer-songwriter who ditched opera for indie pop. She partnered with fellow Melbourne musician Tom Iansek (of #1 Dads and Big Scary) to record the track.

“This song still breaks my heart a bit,” Zietsch says in a statement. “I wrote it as I was experiencing the close of a connection that had quite deeply affected me. I kept this song to myself for quite some time. I still get transported into a different space each time I play it. It holds more meaning to me now than it ever has.”

“Good Thing” is only Maple Glider’s second release to date following 2020’s “As Tradition.” The song also marks her Partisan Records debut and arrives with a music video featured below. Directed by Zietsch’s “dear friend” Bridgette Winten, the flick is hazy and nostalgic, pairing intimate performance shots with idyllic nature scenes.

Zietsch started playing shows as a teenager after teaching herself guitar and piano. Her current moniker Maple Glider is a nod to one of Australia’s native possums. “It’s a play on sugar glider because I think they’re the coolest,” Zietsch told an interviewer last year. “Watching them glide through the air is majestic; it’s everything I want to feel and more.” 

In the same interview, Zietsch described her sound in the following terms: “Like we’re having a conversation, but I’m naked and we’re both trying not to be awkward about it. I feel quite uninhibited when I write music.”

“Good Thing” is a gorgeous indie folk number and a perfect example of that uninhibited, vulnerable quality. Check out the track and video below.

“Good Thing” is out now via Partisan Records.