Flip Grater: Cage For A Song (Maiden/Elite)

Christchurch singer-songwriter Flip Grater gives you a lot to think about on this impressive if slightly wayward debut album released late last year.

Grater flips, we might say, from aggro industrial-sounding rock to fragile folk-framed songs. And has some songs which sit at exactly the mid-point of those extreme ends of a very long spectrum.

She also uses a minimalist approach to her musical backdrops -- repeated acoustic guitar figures or a few crunching chords elsewhere -- which in the softer songs throw the spotlight on her enticingly intimate voice.

So get past the two gritty openers and this album steadily opens up into another, more emotionally engaging, world. (But frankly, I like them rockin' openers too.)

Flip Grater makes her return to Elsewhere because after she released this album she did an extensive New Zealand tour and along the way picked up vegetarian recipes from restaurants, cafes and people she stayed with. She has put them together into a cookbook/tour diary (see her offering under Recipes From Elsewhere).