he number of Australian bands that have gained fans outside their homeland is dreadfully low: the Saints, Radio Birdman, the Birthday Party, and, well, Silverchair form the extent of your average music fan’s knowledge. Import prices and the impossibility of regular touring has meant that those of us on the other side of the globe have remained ignorant of musical accomplishments Down Under. Despite this isolation, those developments tended to mirror, or even predate, similar movements here. Just as the Ramones and Sex Pistols precipitated the explosion\implosion of punk in the West, Australia underwent a parallel burst of creativity in the late ‘70s.


Can’t Stop It! attempts to present a Nuggets-style overview of the scene that flourished during those years, collecting 20 tracks spanning a number of divergent styles and locales. Detailed liner notes identify the people involved (when known) and background information for each track; enjoyable and informative, these descriptions provide an excellent starting point to explore the tangled web of shared personnel and long lost singles.


The bands can be separated into four basic camps: melodic jangle-pop, noisier guitar squalls, synth-driven experimentation, and art school avant-rock. If the finest example of the first type, the Apartments’ ‘Help’, sounds uncannily like the Go-Betweens, it should be little surprise to learn that their leader, Peter Milton Walsh, was a member of an early incarnation of their better-known brethren. Literate lyrics, an insistent strum, and an endearingly adenoidal yelp combine for a thoroughly enjoyable song. A more oblique take on similar territory is provided by Xero, whose ‘The Girls’ increases the dissonance factor to create a vaguely unsettling, if still melodic, pop tune. The appeal of ‘Piano Piano’ will depend on your tolerance for ‘80s New Wave; it is well-crafted and agreeable, to be sure, but also utterly forgettable.


Stooges-influenced noise rock, as always, is a decidedly mixed bag. At its worst, you get dull thrash in the vein of the Slugfuckers’ ‘Cacophony’, which is every bit as pedestrian as the name would suggest. More successful are contributions from the Moodists and Primitive Calculators. ‘Gone Dead’ weds its clattering rhythms to a pulsing bass groove, while ‘Pumping Ugly Muscle’ whips sheet-metal guitars and second-hand electronics into a gloriously chaotic maelstrom of white noise. Both are highly recommended.


Essendon Airport’s ‘How Low Can You Go?’ is, without a doubt, the most contemporary sounding piece of music here. Its burbling synths and pastoral melody could easily find a place of recent efforts by Dntel and the Notwist, using electronic instrumentation to create a remarkably organic soundscape. While the other synth-based songs are more readily dated, there are a number of gems to be found. The Fabulous Marquises are close kin to their jangling six-string compatriots; their electronic sounds replace guitars for an effortlessly catchy piece of pop. Love it or hate it, Ash Wednesday’s ‘Love By Numbers’ is so deliriously dumb that it will take up residence in your subconscious for days on end. The instrumental sextet Equal Local lends a track that is closer to jazz fusion than straightforward pop, but undoubtedly excellent. All things considered, these bands form the most consistently successful group of music in the compilation.


Rounding out this collection is a clutch of bands with an avowedly artistic bent. Their songs tread the thin line between boundary-pushing experimentation and willful audience provocation. One suspects that these bands work best as live performance art, but something is lost in the translation to record. Voigt 465 end up sounding like a less compelling version of Kleenex, while People With Chairs Up Their Noses do little to escape their tag of “the worst band in the world.” Other contributions are more listenable, if less than spectacular. (Makers of) The Dead Travel Fast craft a suitably odd background of clanging carnival noises in ‘The Dumb Waiters’, seemingly played on a piano and scraps of metal. >^> (pronounced chk-chk-chk) close out the compilation with the improvisatory ‘One Note Song’, which thankfully expands beyond the drone implied by its title.


Perhaps the most surprising element of the Australian post-punk scene is the role played by women. Unlike the male-dominated milieu of American and British post-punk, women were contributors to fully half the bands featured here. Lindsay O’Meara was an unquestionably dominant force in the Sydney underground, bringing a defiantly adventurous spirit to any band that would stand still long enough to let her join. It would be interesting to learn more of the circumstances that led so such an atypically strong involvement of women in Australian music of the time.


For those interested in the explosion of creativity and experimentation that followed the initial wave of punk, this is a worthwhile purchase. While nothing here can be deemed truly essential, it provides a valuable look into the unknown bands which flourished in the shadow of their contemporaries.