More than three decades after first emerging from the Australian underground wearing balaclavas and weaponising sarcasm like a contact sport, TISM are heading back out on their first full national tour in over 30 years. Which is either deeply exciting or a very elaborate scam. Probably both.
Fresh off widely talked-about performances at the Sydney Opera House and Melbourne’s PICA, the notoriously unpredictable group have announced a run of national dates promising “a radically different selection of fan favourites each night,” alongside, in their words, “all the other weird shit that goes on at a TISM show.”
That commitment to chaos has always been central to the band’s mythology. Since first appearing in the late 1980s, TISM have built one of the strangest legacies in Australian music: a group capable of moving between acid satire, dance music, pub rock, performance art and outright nonsense while somehow remaining fiercely influential across every phase of alternative culture that followed them.
Part of the appeal has always been how impossible they are to pin down. One moment they’re delivering genuinely sharp social commentary, the next they’re derailing their own seriousness with absurd humour and complete theatrical collapse. Their concerts have long operated less like traditional gigs and more like controlled public incidents, balancing precision musicianship with the constant possibility that the whole thing could dissolve into farce at any moment.
TISM NO MISTAKES TOUR
FRIDAY 10 JULY – ADELAIDE BEER & BBQ FESTIVAL
SATURDAY 22 AUGUST – DARWIN FESTIVAL
WEDNESDAY 7 OCTOBER – FORUM, MELBOURNE
THURSDAY 8 OCTOBER – FORUM, MELBOURNE
SATURDAY 17 OCTOBER – FORTITUDE MUSIC HALL, BRISBANE
WEDNESDAY 21 OCTOBER – CANBERRA THEATRE, CANBERRA
SATURDAY 24 OCTOBER – METRO CITY, PERTH
FRIDAY 30 OCTOBER – ENMORE THEATRE, SYDNEY
SATURDAY 31 OCTOBER – ENMORE THEATRE, SYDNEY
Tickets on sale: Monday 25 May @ 11am AEST time
Tickets from https://davidroywilliams.com/tours/tsimnomistakes/
