Maple Glider: Tiny Desk (Home) Concert

The Tiny Desk is working from home for the foreseeable future. Introducing NPR Music’s Tiny Desk (home) concerts, bringing you performances from across the country and the world. It’s the same spirit — stripped-down sets, an intimate setting — just a different space. Bob Boilen | July 21, 2021 Tori Zietsch, aka Maple Glider, is in her Australian home surrounded by her bandmates and friends. Comforting landscape paintings cover the walls: Tori’s first vinyl album, Melanie’s 1971 album Gather Me, hangs alongside the pictures. She fingerpicks her guitar and sings “Mama It’s Christmas,“ the closing track to her debut album, To Enjoy Is the Only Thing. As she sings the words: “Oh it’s Christmas time again / Where is my brother / Where is my friend / Mama it’s Christmas time, again / Doesn’t he know I’ve got ribbons to wrap him in.“ Looking at the camera’s wide shot, I sense her watching bandmates and those landscape paintings morph into a warm, comforting blanket. Tori grew up steeped — and trapped — in a restri