A few words before we start: I’ve got a revived music podcast you might potentially be interested in called Agony Shorthand, with all episodes captured here. I also did “the done thing” and made a list of my favorite books I read in 2025, with lots of extraneous commentary, which you can take a look at here. On with today’s program!
Haven’t given Making Waves #4 the once-over since blazing through it when it came out in 2016, but I did write a bit about their 2011 debut issue nearly three years ago, perhaps providing something of an introduction to the cut of their femme-slanted jib here. This one, #4, ended up being their final issue, and the point is made is the intro that they’d prefer to focus this one a bit more on current bands as opposed to the mostly-archival stance of the previous three. So that’s what they did!
The World, Rose Mercie and Moss Lime – all bands I liked, all with different features here: an interview, a tour diary and a playlist, respectively. Moss Lime, Freelove Fenner and Brave Radar were fantastic female-fronted abstract pop groups from Montreal last decade, and all deserve to not be forgotten; in fact, they deserve far better than that, and I kinda wish I’d pumped them up a little more when they were still around.
Cover star Su Tissue falls into the “attention comes so much easier when you’re exceptionally attractive” slot that Billy Idol and other beautiful mediocrities did, though I happen to totally love Su’s completely absurd “Manson girl meets Little House on the Prairie” persona, and the fact that she ditched it all at exactly the point when she was ready to be done with it. Also, watch this 90-second video of her Suburban Lawns playing “Unable” in 1979 – wow. Apparently there are middle-aged men who’ve spent way too much time on the internet fruitlessly attempting to track her down, her mystery and magnetism being catnip. For what it’s worth, I am not one of those middle-aged men. Katie Alice Greer wasn’t either, but she chips in here anyway with “The Eternal Mystery of Su Tissue”, and despite using the words “cultural pedagogy” in the piece, pulls off a nice tribute to the Garbo-like woman who even today just wants to be left alone.
Making Waves #4 doesn’t shrink from the post-punk women they’d sorta hung their chapeaus upon in previous issues. Vivian Goldman, for one, gets a MW interview grilling, and we’re all the better for it. Vi Subversa, the woman who fronted Poison Girls and who garnered much attention for being a fortysomething mom whilst doing so, also gets a tribute piece. There are other things on creative women from multiple disciplines whom I don’t know anything about, and, incongruously, a playlist of 70s power pop by dudes to check out.
I know I told you three years ago that 3 of the 4 issues of Making Waves were still available to purchase here, and somehow, for reasons beyond the grasp of sanity and explanation, they still are.
Fanzine Hemorrhage 