In the sunburnt suburbs of 1970s Australia, where Countdown pulses through TV sets and Cold Chisel riffs rattle garage doors, Jake Thompson and Claire Morgan meet as teenagers, two kids chasing sound, sweat, and something bigger than their postcode. He’s a rough-edged muso with calloused fingers and a heart full of pub rock dreams. She’s a sharp-tongued aspiring music journalist, armed with a leather notebook, Doc Martens, and a mind wired for lyrics and headlines. From the moment their eyes lock across a record store turntable spinning Skyhooks, their lives begin a decades-long duet, sometimes in harmony, more often off-key.

Set against the shifting soundscape of Australian music history, Vinyl Vows: Never Tear Us Apart is a sweeping, bruised, and beautifully chaotic love story told in alternating first-person chapters across three turbulent decades. From sweaty Bondi gigs and Enmore Theatre moshpits to muddy Tamworth paddocks and neon-lit London dive bars, Jake and Claire ride the highs of new wave, grunge, and pub rock rebellion, and crash through the lows of addiction, ambition, and estrangement.

They fight in alleyways to the sound of Midnight Oil, make love beneath flickering TVs blaring Countdown, and part with only a Crowded House lyric between them. Their marriage, their music, their entire world crumbles and reforms through moments: the death of Michael Hutchence, the Port Arthur massacre, a song on the radio that breaks them open. Through riots, funerals, record deals, and broken stubbies on Newtown pavement, Jack and Claire learn that some love stories aren’t clean, they’re distorted, full of static, and stitched together with the hum of vinyl ghosts and what-ifs.

Told through 35 vivid chapters, each year, a track on the ultimate mixtape, this is a novel soaked in sweat, salt, nostalgia, and noise. For fans of Daisy Jones & The Six, Boy Swallows Universe, and anyone who ever screamed lyrics into the night and hoped they’d be heard, Vinyl Vows: Never Tear Us Apart is a fierce and tender tribute to the records that raised us, the cities that shaped us, and the one person who never quite let go, even when the needle slipped.