Album Review: Maple Glider - I Get Into Trouble

Every time we speak, I don’t want to hear the end of it…

And in sitting down, after roughly a month spent with the sophomore album from Tori Zietsch’s project Maple Glider, I Get Into Trouble, and in giving consideration to the best way to think about it, and everything it holds within, and to write about all of that, what I realized, after that month, was that the thing I think I find most compelling, or fascinating, and admire, actually, about a number of songwriters, is how literate they can be while still working within relatively strict confines.

A writer—someone who writes fiction, or an essayist, works within confines as well, albeit much less strict comparatively. Imagination is quite literally the limit to the world that someone putting together a novel, or a short story, is able to craft, and can take as many pages, and use as many words, as they’d like in order to do that, an essayist, or someone writing creative non-fiction, has a few more boundaries with how far they can go, or how much work needs to be put in, in order to take an event, or a moment, and turn it into a genuinely interesting narrative that does, eventually, after however many pages, or however many words, ends at what was, or is, to be learned. 

A songwriter has, by choice, a lot less room to work with—and a lot more to consider in terms of the average length of a pop song, the traditional structure of a verse, a chorus, and then another verse, allowing the words to tumble into a specific melody, and those words, when tumbling are perhaps required to follow some kind of rhyme. 

Songwriting, like writing itself, is certainly not easy, and a hyper-literate songwriter—one that seems to be going out of their way to create a vivid narrative within the allotted space, is the kind of writer that, like the author of your favorite book, you take notice of immediately, and in doing so, become entranced in nearly every word they are uttering. 

Zietsch, and specifically, on I Get Into Trouble, is that kind of writer—a songwriter, yes, but also a writer in the sense that across the album’s ten tracks, she lures you into a world that is wildly captivating—weaving past and present, tragedy and humor, to construct personal narratives that are poignant and evocative, but steeped in the hazy of ambiguity that leaves you not wanting more from her exactly, but keeps you in a state of suspense, and wonder—a device that, like songwriting that is this personal and revealing, is also a true marvel.

*

Two years is, objectively, not that long of a time at all, but it is, subjectively, long enough to have retained some things that occurred during this time, but have simply forgotten a number of others. 

Time, also, within the last four years, has been harder, for me at least, to keep as well organized as I was once able to—the years, really, blurring together for a number of reasons.

I, perhaps, would have been introduced to Zietsch’s project Maple Glider as spring turned into summer in 2021, through potentially a few places—a blurb on the news and occasional music review site Stereogum is a possibility, or through the recommendation, or suggestion, from someone on Twitter or Instagram.

But who?

I do not recall. 

What I do remember, though, is in the summer of 2021, when my teenage nephew was visiting the area and requested that I take him to a few record stores in the Minneapolis area, that it was imperative that I find a copy of Zietsch’s debut with the project, To Enjoy is The Only Thing.

And I liked To Enjoy—there is a warmth to how it sounds, and even when the Zietsch steers the songs into more devastating territory, specifically the further along it gets, the meticulous production details, calling to mind something crisp, robust, and welcoming, make it a very inviting, alluring album to spend time with. 

And I liked To Enjoy—and, perhaps, even as summer turned into autumn in 2021, it was an album that I most certainly gave consideration to writing something about. But, what I have found, the longer that I have been writing about music, and the way that I have grown into writing about music, there are so many albums and only so many hours in the day that I am able to dedicate to analyzing an album the way that I want to and the way I feel it deserves to be written about. For every album I do inevitably sit down with, and focus my energies on for two or three weeks, there are myriad others that I am unable to show the same kind of focus to.

To Enjoy was one of those albums—one that, even now, two years later, frequently finds its way onto my turntable, but one I was unable to spend the kind of analytical time with that I, retrospectively, should have.

From the moment I Get Into Trouble begins, however, I understood that it was an important record—delicate, thoughtful, and often absolutely harrowing in what Zietsch is working through within her writing, and it is a record that does, ultimately, demand your attention, from beginning to end with the otherworldliness that is conjured seemingly effortlessly from both Zietsch’s vocals, but from the way these songs, similar to the sound of To Enjoy, are produced and arranged.

There is that warmth, yes, and within that warmth, there is something inviting or enticing about it, but there is something unsettling too—you can catch glimpses of it within the material on To Enjoy is The Only Thing, but Zietsch is willing to lean into that unnerving sensation across I Get Into Trouble. The attention to detail in how it sounds is astounding, regularly calling to mind folk, or folk adjacent music, of a completely different era—accessible and often lush, but off-kilter and eerie enough at times where it does try to keep you at arm’s length as it merges an at times dreamy, swooning feeling with something dark, creeping just off on the horizon.

*

In the last decade of writing about music, I often fall into describing an album, once I reach my conclusion on it, as being “damn near perfect, which I wonder now how much of a backhanded compliment that might be, albeit certainly unintentional.

Even my favorite records of all time—like Fantastic Planet, or OK Computer, for example, each contain, like, one song that I don’t absolutely hate, but it is not a favorite, and if listening to those records from top to bottom, I might feel compelled to skip over it completely, or becoming impatient while it plays through. 

There are no bad songs on I Get Into Trouble—and it is, honestly, a perfect album. It’s short—maybe to a fault, even, at ten songs running less than 40 minutes in length, and while Zietsch did release a handful of tunes off of it as singles in the months leading up to the album’s arrival in full, it is a collection that, the more time with it I have spent, the more it has become apparent it is intended to be consumed as an uninterrupted whole, simply because of the narrative threads that connect one song to another one later on in the album’s sequencing—which is impressive, and tactic that does make it an album that requires truly active, thoughtful listening every time.

And as, if not more, impressive, is how Zietsch is able to weave those threads together as the album continues to reveal itself—detailing, at times unflinchingly, the painful end of a relationship, while turning things further inward, at times, and reflecting on herself. 

Though, the most difficult, and most startling elements to her songwriting on I Get Into Trouble seems to be unfortunately connected somehow, as she explores a religious upbringing that she has been trying to put behind her, and a number of allusions to unwanted physical encounters—all of which is to say that the haunting, beautiful weight of I Get Into Trouble, and how it is presented, lingers with you long after the spectral, anguishing final song has come to an end.

* 

And there was heartbreak, or, at the very least, a breakup, that Zietsch had written in, as she was able, into some of the material on To Enjoy—and while heartbreak, or at the very least, a breakup, is not one of the central themes she’s chasing to work with on I Get Into Trouble, it is something that is present in a few of these songs, specifically in the sprawling opening track, “Do You,” much later on in the album’s finest moment, and still within its first side on the dizzying, seductive “Two Years.”

Across I Get Into Trouble, there is a callback, or an homage, to a sound from a different era—and within a song like “Two Years,” as it shifts back and forth in its pacing and tone, Zietsch keeps it, sonically, in a hazy, 1970s kind of sound, right down to the slinking groove it finds with ease, and the extremely crisp production on the clattering hi-hat coming from the steady beat of the drum kit. 

And that groove, and the ever-changing tonality, and the hazy, swooning nature of “Two Years” does distract from just how bleak, or hopeless, its lyricism is—you get the impression that the relationship she’s depicting isn’t all that great, but in really sitting down with the song, and actively listening to her writing, things feel very, very desolate. “It is cold where I’m laying, and where I’m laying is right beside you,” she confesses within the first verse before the song makes its shift into what serves as the chorus, which is filled with regret and a desperate response from the off-stage antagonist. 

“One year in, I tried to leave, but you said, ‘Baby, please let’s sink into this new thing—I promise you’ll be loving me again,’” she recalls. “But I’m still here, staring at the wall, hoping I’ll see beyond it, but it’s never getting smaller than it is.”

“Two Years” continues to tumble around, while Zietsch reveals her plans for departure—“I’ll play this gently for you, babe, because I know that you don’t want to hear me say I’ve been so happy since I booked my flight to leave you,” before reflecting on what is depicted as one of the sources of contention within this relationship—the resentment of change, or, if nothing else, personal growth and understanding.

“I know you want me as I was,” she sings as the song spirals toward its conclusion. “Laying in the sand, playing with your hair, in the middle of November.”

And as coy, or as sly, as the hope of getting out of this relationship does appear in its depiction within “Two Years,” it is perhaps the same relationship that is alluded to again in the song that immediately follows, “FOMO,” which is among the album’s most haunting and dissonant in how it unfolds.

And that haunting dissonance is something that Zietsch explored, at times, on her debut as Maple Glider, but it is something that she continues to push herself further and further into on I Get Into Trouble—recalling the kind of esoteric folk, or acoustic sounds, or at the very least, an influence of an artist like Sibylle Baier, who, after she was referenced as an inspiration for Emma Ruth Rundle’s sparse, dark, inward turn in 2021 on Engine of Hell, I continue to hear the spirit of in other artists as they work within an inherently warm, or inviting sound, but doing such subtle things musically, or vocally, to make it slightly unnerving, or unsettling.

Musically, “FOMO” is certainly one of the more unsettling songs on the album, with a dark undercurrent that ripples through it, while Zietsch returns to her depiction of a relationship that has long since passed its shelf life, but within those depictions, she also details what that feeling of being trapped or stuck, is doing to other facets of her life.

There is a feeling of menace—and if not menace, then something ominous, or dreadful, from the moment “FOMO” begins—specifically in the tone that Zietsch sings the first few lines in before she allows her voice to rise to a place of extreme fragility, creating a palpable sense of tension that she never allows to resolved, and in the minimal instrumentation that accompanies her, including a gentle rhythm slapped out by hand on a drum, a quivering electric guitar adding light, but creeping flourishes, and a very quietly plucked acoustic guitar.

“I’ve got a fear of missing out,” Zietsch explains early in the song’s first verse, while her vocals just coast along on top of the slowly swirling music underneath her. “And I have it so severe—I am not myself and I have not been all year.”

The bleakest, or most harrowing portrait, though, that she paints of a relationship that is beyond “running its course” or even limping along, comes in what could be described as the chorus. It’s also here where she is the most honest about herself, and the most unflattering. “My bank account is not healthy, and neither is my sex life,” she reveals, stretching the phrase “sex life” out for much longer than it should seemingly should be, letting her voice rise higher and higher into a breathier range that creates a truly visceral sense of unease. “I’ve never felt so lonely with a person I’ve laid day by day beside,” she admits, and again, allowing her voice to reach that fragile, dissonant place to really punctuate the severity of her desperation.

Her reflections on a past relationship, however, are not all as desolate as they are depicted in these songs—as the album’s second side opens up, the sultry, slow-burning “You’re Gonna Be A Daddy” finds Zietsch singing about someone with some affection in her words, though the very fascinating thing about this song specifically is just how much intentional ambiguity there is in her narrative, and with just how murky the lyrics are, it is difficult to tell exactly what kind of relationship she has with this person.

“Baby, you’re gonna be a daddy,” she coos at the beginning of the song. “I really want to be the cool aunty,” she continues, before revealing the lyric’s surprising punchline—“Like I am to my best friend’s dog.”

The song itself returns to a line that is both repeated in a way that offers up comfort, or is soothing, but there is this odd, unspoken feeling of desperation and sadness that comes with it—“I just want to get to know you,” and it is within the other verse that gently tumble out into the well measured rhythm, where there is a kind of blurriness that Zietsch takes us right up to the edge of before leaving us in the dark with what she means.

“Lately, I’ve had this worried feeling,” she states delicately, early on in the song. “Like time is gaining meaning without you in my life.”

Later on, after luring us further and further into the song with the hypnotic melody of the single line that serves as the chorus, things do take a bit of a dark, or at least more honest, turn in her observations, the urgency of her lyrics growing as the music surprisingly begins to build to a spiraling, noisy, borderline psychedelic-inspired burst. “You’re gonna be somebody’s dad, and I’m gonna be on somebody’s platform, playing songs that I wrote about you,” she sings, with a bit of fury rising in her voice. “But I don’t know anything—they're gonna see right through me.”

Musically, “You’re Gonna Be A Daddy” is another example of how subtle and daring the arrangements are on I Get Into Trouble. It begins with a kind of lazy shaker rhythm, scuttling along underneath the quiet strums of an acoustic guitar, with a thick, rolling bass line coming in to punctuate the final line of the first verse, and some very light additional percussion finding its way shortly thereafter. 

There is a restraint used within how the music grows incrementally, so that by the time the song does reach the end where things become cacophonic, it comes as such a surprise—but maybe it shouldn’t have been, because it was all leading up to that moment where Zietsch and the assemblage of musicians who worked with her on the album, are able to let go, just briefly.

*

Sometimes my own body doesn’t feel like my body…

I Get Into Trouble, for a number of reasons, and in a number of ways, is a wildly surprising album, and perhaps the thing that is most surprising is the candor with which Zietsch writes about trauma—open enough to let the listener know that something malicious has occurred, or will occur, within the world of the song, but cloaked in enough shadowy, poetic, fragmented imagery that, throughout, when the implications are of truly something unspeakable, you are still left just slightly in the dark by both what she is willing to reveal, and the hand that she will not play.

The idea of trauma, or at least a past that requires a lot of unpacking, appears relatively early on within the record on the jaunty, infectious “Dinah,” where Zietsch’s religious upbringing and the confusion that comes with both trying to make sense of it then, as well as grapple with what it means now, is detailed quite starkly. And that starkness is intelligently offset by both the very matter-of-fact, nearly deadpan delivery of some of the lyrics in the song, and the upbeat, jaunty, folksy nature of the music itself.

“Dinah,” which was one of the advance singles issued ahead of the album’s release, is the fastest-paced song in terms of tempo, from this batch of ten—and the speed with which it clips along is helpful in the sense that neither you, nor Zietsch are given much time to really dwell on the gravity of what she’s singing about. And for her, that is intentional—revealing her resentment and misgivings about the religious environment she was brought up in while not batting an eyelash, and letting her vocals skitter and coast breathlessly with the unrelenting rhythm that backs her. 

And for us, as listeners, it means that the weight of the song, or just how personal it is, might not register during a first or second listen—even when you certainly find yourself caught up in the extraordinarily infectious melody and hypnotic delivery she uses within the chorus—“I’ve been in the church making sure no one’s looking up my skirt,” she sings with just the slightest smirk in her voice before continuing with, “But I do not feel safe here.”

She then changes the lines slightly near the end of the song, beginning to unveil just how much darkness courses throughout this album, just under the surface: “I’ve been in the church, but the church is in my skirt, and my skirt defines my worth.”

The titular character in “Dinah” is, unfortunately, a cautionary tale—and the very idea of such a thing is what Zietsch explores in the two most distressing songs on I Get Into Trouble.  

Sometimes my own body doesn’t feel like my body…

And there is, at least at first glance, seemingly a sense of humor, to the title of the album’s centerpiece, “Don’t Kiss Me.” Or, at least, until you listen to it and let the severity of its narrative sink in. The humor, I suppose, comes as an expected antithesis to songs like “Shut Up Kiss Me,” from Angel Olsen.

“Don’t Kiss Me” opens with Zietsch asking a question—one that is, perhaps, both intended to seduce, but also make us a little uncomfortable as listeners. 

“What age do you like me the best?” she asks the song's antagonist before continuing. “Right before I put you to the test? Back when I absorbed everything you said?”

From there, “Don’t Kiss Me” doesn’t look back, and pulls us through Zietsch not so much unpacking, or processing a specific moment, but simply into this moment with her, while it replays over and over again, with the dread and urgency she is still filled with spilling over, and threatening to overtake us as well.

“Don’t kiss me,” she demands as the song continues and builds. “My safety should not have to be earned,” she observes, before delivering what is probably one of the most difficult lines to hear on the entire album—“I was just a baby until you made me into a lesson to be learned.”

The conceit of “Don’t Kiss Me” comes in the repetition (and growing intensity of the delivery of) of the titular phrase, spoken less like a mantra, or something that lures you in each time she speaks completes the expression, but rather, it arrives more like a desperate, unhinged plea—the desperation, and sorrow, then, that is attached to it, becoming the kind of thing so visceral you can feel it coming through the song, and directly at you, whether you are prepared for it or not.

“Sometimes my own body doesn’t feel like my body, but definitely don’t kiss me,” Zietsch asks. And the instrumentation in “Don’t Kiss Me,” which began as a gentle strum of the acoustic guitar during the first verse, does not take a dark turn, exactly, but it does build to a certain point, and remains steady in creating an intensity that sways underneath these pleas, never overpowering or threatening to take away from the importance, and emotional gravity of the narrative and portrait that is depicted. 

Zietsch, then, continues to work through specifically traumatic events in her life later in the album with its emotionally eviscerating penultimate track, “Surprises,” where she, in her writing, offers slightly more details within the description of events, though, much like “Don’t Kiss Me” and “Dinah,” does continue to play what is presumed to be the more graphic, or most difficult to hear, parts of these stories, to her chest.

“Surprises,” musically, is the most sparse in its arranging, and is the song on I Get Into Trouble that, perhaps, owes the most or was influenced the most by the esoteric and even dissonant or uneasy sounds of Sibylle Baier, or even Buffy Sainte-Marie. And even with the spectral accompaniment, and the hiss within the room picked up by the microphones drifting through, there is a terrible, claustrophobic feeling from the moment it begins because Zietsch gives you little, if any, room to breathe—with the song’s opening line coming within the first second.

“This weightless feeling doesn’t get me like it should,” she begins, with the acoustic guitar gently spiraling around underneath her. “I keep on treading, but the water’s just not good. I still remember that fall in Casablanca—how karaoke never felt like much fun after.”

She follows this up with a question full of tension, but provides no answer to it—“I wonder if you knew what you were going to do?”

It’s when she reaches the song’s chorus, of singing the phrase, “Surprises,” and allowing all four syllables to bend and drift and tumble on top of the quiet strums of the guitar, that you do really feel the dissonance, and the terrible feeling of dread that Zietsch is conveying—the dread which she doubles down on describing in a vivid but vague way only a few lines later. “Surprises work like they should. You got me real good. You took something that you could never give back again.”

The idea of shame, and the shame one feels and maybe can never dissociate themselves from with their body, or their sexuality, is something that is seemingly indirectly a part of a number of the songs on I Get Into Trouble, with the attempt then to reclaim your relationship with yourself, your body, and your sexuality. And it is the idea of shame, and what you do with that, if anything, that Zietsch sings of in the final verse to “Surprises.”

In the song’s second verse, she does depict something horrific occurring, though the extent of it is cloaked in ambiguity—“You had both tried to get on in,” she sings. “’Til I was crying on your steps, humiliated by your friend.”

“It’s odd to say you were just a stranger…a stranger I met that day,” she reflects in the final verse. “I wonder if you knew you’d be bringing me years of shame.”

And the power in the song comes from the way the music, as minimal as it is, swirls and rushes under Zetisch's command, with the unnerving sensations it brings—and the real power, I think, is not in what is depicted as the song sways back and forth, or with the layered voices slowly singing the single word “Surprises,” but rather, the power is in what is not completely revealed—something implied, or suggested, though kept secret as a means of perhaps self-preservation to not give too much away to the listener, with the hopes that they will understand, and respect how much has been said through going unsaid.

*

And I would not go so far as to say that it is a joke, exactly, that I have with my friend Alyssa, but rather just something she pointed out to me a few months back—and it’s neither a good nor a bad thing, but something she had observed was that more often than not, my “favorite” song on an album, or the song that I gravitate the most toward, is always the saddest. 

She is right—and it isn’t like this was a surprise to me exactly, but it was, I suppose, surprising to hear that it was the kind of thing that somebody had noticed about me.

And so it is, then, not surprising that it is ultimately not one of I Get Into Trouble’s most obviously traumatic songs that is my favorite, or at least resonates the most, but rather, it is the most inherently heartbreaking and gorgeous—“For You And All The Songs We Loved,” among the album’s shortest in running time, but in that time, says so much as it arrives within the final (and terribly emotional) third.

Opening with the quiet sound of a chintzy drum machine rhythm that scuttles and bubbles very briefly before we hear the warmth of Zietsch’s voice, the strum of her guitar, and the gentle tapping of the percussion, along with the rolling bass line that surges in the spaces that form in between all of those other elements, “For You” is akin, or at least connected by theme, to a number of the songs from the first half of the record—like “Two Years,” specifically, in its lyricism, and how bleak, and devastating, of a portrait that is created of a relationship is on the verge of falling to pieces, with both parties more or less unwilling to admit or acknowledge just how bad things feel and have become.

And there is just the slightest twang that ripples throughout “For You”—though perhaps it is just me, implying that there is the faintest of an older, and sadder kind of Country and Western sound to the way it tumbles itself forward like a slow dance, near last call, on the dance floor in a bar where you are illuminated by the neon moon¹—like in the mournful quality the song has as a whole, or in the way the music, and Zietsch’s voice both swell on specific words, and within specific moments, in the devastating chorus. 

It is, of course, Zietsch’s vocal performance here—the heartbreak and sorrow are visceral, to say the least—and not only the way she sings the words, but the words themselves—less ambiguous, or hazy, in what it is depicting, and much more vivid, and effecting, in the portrait she’s meticulously crafted of a relationship, on the brink, fraught with unspoken tension while everything frays around it.

The way she sings them, though, is fascinating, and does end up being one of the things that make “For You” what it is, within the way she bends, stretches, and just stops short with the delivery of some of the lines, giving a loaded pause in between two words, which allows Zietsch to remain in control of the narrative, because we can never truly assume the direction she’s heading—specifically within the startling and evocative first line. 

“It’s your birthday, and I’m screaming,” she begins, before taking just a breath and a beat, and then continuing. “On the inside of my chest. It’s a nice day,” she continues, creating contrast after contrast with imagery, both pleasant and don’t. “And I’d like it if you’d help me take off my dress.”

From there, though, the portrait becomes exceedingly bleaker and bleaker, when she delivers the most personally affecting lines on the entire album. “I wish that you could love me the way I keep trying to. But I know that if it’s hard for me, it’s probably hard for you.”

And while the song itself, structurally, swells dramatically along with Zietsch’s voice, just how fractured this relationship is is revealed—“You’ve said that you don’t like it when I make plans. So put that song on,” she implores. “The one we love that makes us sad. I’ll pretend I’m not going anywhere.”

And, like “Two Years” before it, it is later on in “For You And All The Songs We Loved,” where the idea of time, and feeling stuck, or trapped, is explored. “Sometimes I sit and wonder if I’ll know you in one year’s time,” she muses in the short, second verse. “Maybe I’ll be in the country—maybe we’ll still be drinking wine.”

As the song gently heads into its conclusion, there is no clear resolve, and no easy answers for the difficult questions that have gone unasked, or things that are not truly said between the characters within the world of “For You.” 

“But for now, dear, it hurts too much for me to stay,” Zietsch confesses, a heightened sense of both desperation and sadness in her voice. “So put that song on, the one we love, and just press play…I’ll pretend I’m not going anywhere.”

*

Every time we speak, I don’t want to hear the end of it…

Like writing itself, songwriting, septically, is certainly not easy. And a hyper-literate songwriter, like Tori Zietsch, is one who is going out of her way to create a vivid narrative within the space a pop song allows for, is the kind of writer that, like the author of your favorite book, you take notice of immediately, and in doing so, you become entranced in nearly every word uttered.

Zietsch’s writing across I Get Into Trouble is like that—luring us, as listeners, into a world that is captivating, as past and present and tragedy and humor are woven together to construct such well-developed and robust personal narratives—poignant and evocative, but often are steeped in a haze of an ambiguity that leaves you not exactly wanting more out of her, but it keeps you in this state of suspense and of wonder. 

Her songwriting is, from the moment this album begins until its spectral conclusion, personal and revealing, but the real marvel is in how she manages to keep just enough to herself as a secret only she knows.

And it is her ability to seamlessly blur the lines between past and present that is among the album’s more astounding elements, and it is at the end of I Get Into Trouble’s first side, on the gentle, comforting “You At The Top of The Driveway,” where she that line between time becomes the most blurry, or muddled, as she bends it in order to get the song’s heartfelt narratives to where they need to converge. 

In the press materials that accompany I Get Into Trouble, it is noted that “You At The Top of The Driveway” is a song that Zietsch dedicated to her young niece—who is seemingly a character in the story that is being told before the song itself shifts suddenly from present, to the past, as Zietsch reflects, in quick, fragmented, bittersweet flashes, on her own adolescence, and overlap between growing up and growing apart. 

And as bittersweet as the lyrics are, as Zietsch continues to slowly allow them to unfold within the gentle, ornate acoustic guitar string flurry underneath her, there is also a very real beauty to the sentimentality she details within both periods of time that the song takes place within. And there is a very real beauty to the deliberately slow way she begins to pull the pieces of the past, and the present, together—there are moments when it is clear when a lyric is about one, more than the other, and there are others where the idea of time is blurred completely and there is a haze of sly ambiguity that hangs over what she’s depicting. 

“I hope that one day you will release all of your fears on top of me,” Zietsch sings, in a higher, fragile, breathier range, allowing the words to land with precision into the spaces provided for them by the gentle, soothing strums of the guitar. “And we’ll throw a party for your baby,” she continues. “I’ll bet they’ll be great at dancing.” 

Musically, like a few of the other moments on I Get Into Trouble, “You At The Top” tips its hat to that kind of older, antiquated, idiosyncratic folk sound, just in how there is, like, a rhythm, or a pace, but it is very easy going, and there is a lot of room for it to slow down, or begin to speed up slightly at the whim of Zietsch as she feels fit within the story she is crafting. 

“We’ll go for walks—collect tadpoles in the rain,” she continues within the song’s second verse. “Just like we did when we were the same age and mum was selling Avon. We thought nothing was wrong ’til we grew into separate lounge rooms and so on.”

“You At The Top,” then, takes a headfirst turn into the truly bittersweet, as these reflections of adosdence begin moving through time with urgency. “The years that divide us—the things that broke our trust snuck in whilst we played between God’s hall and our house,” Zietsch recalls. “Still, every time I look, I see you at the top of the driveway in my purple dress.”

And, I think, outside of a very specific line within this song, and the way that the idea of time, and family connections, and how those things overlap or converge, is detailed within the writing, what is perhaps most impressive, or is what does really linger long after the song has concluded, is the way Zietsch offers us no real resolve. 

I mean, it’s there. A kind of resolution. Or it’s implied—certainly in the way she has bonded with her niece now, but even in knowing that, there is the slightest sense of unease that comes from the kind of tensions, unspoken and not, that occur within the relationships we have with family. 

Maybe, though, it is not the resolution that we, as listeners, might really want. But it is the one that she’s willing to give. 

The beauty, or the real source of interest for me, in “You At The Top of The Driveway,” comes from the lines that Zietsch uses as bookends, and the way that, even with as sentimental and nearest as they are, they are also ambiguously enough in both their writing and their placement in how the rest of the song unfolds, that they can, and probably do, fit within both time periods, and are directed at two different people. And it is this kind of trick, or device, within the structure of the song, gives it such a sense of wonder. 

And, after spending over a month with I Get Into Trouble, and giving consideration to the best way to think about it, and everything it holds within, and to write about all of that, and how personally effecting, or poignant, the imagery within these lyrics, or the thought behind the words themselves was to me, what I came back to, both surprisingly and not, was these lines, and I suppose specifically their sentiment.

“Every time we speak, I don’t want to hear the end of it,” Zietsch sings gently. “Months that follow, I’ll be hanging on to the words.”

Because there are those individuals that you do, in conversation, hang onto literally every word they’ve said, regardless of what they are talking about—the kind of conversations, or, maybe, the kind of connection, where you do continue to think about something they’ve said to you, or asked you, weeks and months later.

There are those people that you do feel the closest to, and that you can be the most honest with, and when you see them, or talk with them, you go out of your way to try and extend the conversation just a little bit longer. A minute. Even a few seconds. The longer goodbye and the assurance of when you will see each other next or that you’ll talk soon.

And I think that, even within the vivid use of language in “You At The Top of The Driveway,” and the way Zietsch guides us through her memories, and continues to pull us through even as they overlap and blur, the real beauty of this song is within this depiction of this very honest, and true, feeling of genuine affection and admiration.

I don’t want to hear the end of it. 

*

One of the most effecting lines, of all lyrics on I Get Into Trouble that are impactful or resonant, is the opening to “For You And All The Songs We Loved,” where Zietsch, under the gentle swaying of the music, begins by saying, “It’s your birthday, and I’m screaming.” 

It is so impactful because of the harsh contrast she creates, and just how vivid of a portrait she paints with just six words.

As the album comes to an end, she returns to the idea of raising her voice, with the aptly titled “Scream,” the album’s longest track, and the song where she allows herself, and the music, to smolder a little more than anywhere else in the songs that arrive before it.

And there were two places where, when really sitting down with I Get Into Trouble, were not even the best description, but rather, seemingly the most accurate way to detail my observations meant drawing the slightest comparison to Lana Del Rey. The first came in the slow-burning, ever-shifting “Two Years,” which both thematically, as well as in its restlessness, reminded me of some of Elizabeth Grant’s more ambitious, sprawling work from the last few years.

The second was within “Scream,” where it is less about a restlessness, or ambition, and much more about the haunting, earnest way Zietsch's voice arrives, and carries itself with a vulnerable confidence over the contemplative, measured strums of the acoustic guitar.

“Scream,” as the final statement on the album, is a reflection on a kind of longing, with the feeling of urgency that can, often, attach itself to the longing; with Zietsch, writing from two distinct types of longing, with the juxtaposition of the two coming together to create a stark, chilling way for I Get Into Trouble to end.

Given the way that romance, or maybe the dissolution of romance that, is depicted on I Get Into Trouble, it is surprising to hear Zietsch sing the opening verse of “Scream.” “Don’t meet me if you aren’t gonna meet me equal parts of the way,” she asks, before continuing. “Don’t say you miss me if you aren’t gonna kiss me. It’s too hard to live this way.”

There is, then, this sense of longing, or of a want, that she is pleading for to an off-stage character. And then, there is, in the song’s chorus, a different sense of longing, or of a want for something larger for herself, and to be able to truly let go, and figure out who she is.

“Whilst everybody else is sleeping in their beds, I’m speaking to myself to get the words out of my head,” she explains before detailing a kind of stuck, or trapped feeling—or seemingly being suffocated by circumstances. “I want to scream,” she confesses. “But everybody else is home. Even nine to fivers don’t live outside their doors anymore.”

And it is affecting—the thought, or notion, of someone being so filled with something—anger, sadness, frustrations, exhaustion, and the only way they feel they can let it out is through opening their mouth wide and forcing their voice out as loud or as destructive as it can become. 

And it is effecting—ending the album with this lullaby of sorts, where there is no resolution, or resolve, for Zietsch, really. I mean, there are brief flashes of hope, or good things that she, is clinging to, like the love of her niece, and maybe (or maybe not though) the antagonist in “You’re Gonna Be A Daddy.” There are these brief flashes of hope, or these good things to cling to, but I Get Into Trouble isn’t a hopeless album, exactly.

It is dark, and insular, and more than anything else, in staring down the darkest parts that we may want to continue suppressing, it is a brutally honest album. 

And I do, often, at the end, will say that an album is a reflection of the human condition—and my feeling here is that both is, and is not, how to describe I Get Into Trouble. There are places where Tori Zietsch’s fascinating, personal, and literate songwriting is accessible enough where it does become something that someone can see parts (unflattering, of course) of themselves in, but more than that, it is an album about her lived experience—melancholic or bittersweet, at times very difficult or troubling to relive, but it is the story of someone who is continuing to search for something that might be much larger than themselves, as a vessel of escape. 

^{1 - I think a lot about the idea of the “neon moon,” as both a description of a place, and a place with a very specific feeling, as well as the song itself.} 

I Get Into Trouble is out now via Partisan Records.