MUSIC TISM: Death to Art Sidney Myer Music Bowl, November 9 ★★★★★ Given (gestures around) all of this, perhaps moving into the 21st century was a bad move, after all. So here we are at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl pretending it’s 1999. Art-rock terrorists TISM are the main attraction, along with a double-take-worthy line-up of bands who were a big deal last time TISM headlined a show two decades ago.
“Time doesn’t exist!” declares The Mavis’ Matt Thomas, alongside his sister Becky, dressed almost exactly like she was when their hit Cry came out in ’98. The night is full of proclamations like that. “DEATH TO ART” is scrawled in red across the stage backdrop.
“Give a man a mask and he’ll tell you the truth,” says Ben Lee, paraphrasing Oscar Wilde and donning a TISM-inspired balaclava, before playing Catch My Disease to a crowd willing to suspend their traumatic associations with words like “mask”, “truth”, and “disease” for one night. Dressed in red coveralls and matching balaclavas with red foam mohawks TISM look like alien priests. Credit: Martin Philbey The crowd, who would have been in their late teens the first time these bands hit, is awash with picnic blankets and grey hair.
Sharehouse chore rosters have been replaced with community Facebook groups, and pingers have been replaced with little Proustian madeleines of songs that fill you with bittersweet nostalgia. Machine Gun Fellatio, reuniting after 19 years, were once renowned f.