Today, the great Dominic Monaghan (Lord of the Rings, Lost, Wild Things with Dominic Monaghan) joins me for a truly epic deep dive into The Beatles White Album. We get into Dom's Beatles origin story, his conflicted feelings about John Lennon, how the album is an audition for the Beatles respective solo careers, his Beatles tattoos and whether he has pried an early look at Peter Jackson's new Beatles documentary out of his old mate. But the real meat of this episode is a track by track exploration of the entire double album, from Back in the USSR to Good Night. It is the considered opinion of this podcast that nothing beats a full spectrum Beatles nerd out, and this is one for the ages.

Fresh off releasing the greatest album of 2021, Middle Kids frontwoman Hannah Joy makes a welcome return to the show to talk about The National's seminal 2013 album 'Trouble Will Find Me'. We talk about The National's reputation as a band who make 'grower' albums, how this album represents the culmination of the band's career to that time, the use of rhythm, space and texture and how that influenced the new Middle Kids album, integrating family dynamics into a band, how to age gracefully as a rock band and the cocktail bar in Portland where the drinks are inspired by National songs. Plus Hannah reveals the most contentions albums each Middle Kids member has tried to play in the band van while on tour.

Today I'm joined by Australian music legend Murray Cook (The Wiggles, The Soul Movers) to discuss David Bowie's nailed-on glam rock classic 'The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars'. Murray tells the tale of how he traded away a Slade LP for this album, we debate its 'concept album' bonafides, we gush over the greatness of Spiders guitarist Mick Ronson, why the record was more successful than Hunky Dory, the unique sequencing of the album, how Bowie stayed cool til the end, his "cut up" method of writing lyrics, why he was such an effective collaborator and more.

Today, the woman being El Perro del Mar, Sarah Assbring, goes from subject of this podcast to a guest, as she joins me in celebration of the 20th anniversary of Spiritualized's 2001 album 'Let It Come Down'. We talk about how the album shook up Sarah's life during a period where she had walked away from performing as a singer-songwriter, how the ambition of the record continues to inspire her, the incredible scope of the album's orchestrations and emotions, the relationship between the album and religiosity, how Sarah has found her own version of the wall of sound used on this album and how she still harbours ambitions to create a record with a similar scope.

Today spellbinding singer-songwriter-doctor Sophie Payten aka Gordi joins me to dive into the world of Bon Iver's 2016 game changer '22, A Million'. We dig into how Sophie feels about frequent comparisons between her and Bon Iver, how this album upended what people thought of as Bon Iver's sound, different interpretations of the album's opening line 'It might be over soon', what it was like for Sophie to work with this album's co-producer and mixer on her latest record, the unpronounceable track names and how she ended up singing with Bon Iver on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. Plus, we chat about Sophie's new single, a duet with friend of the show Alex Lahey about my favorite dive bar, Dinos in East Nashville.

Australian comedy legend Colin Lane (Lano and Woodley) is a self-proclaimed sceptic when it comes to people's deep emotional connection to pop stars, but he proves a game guest on this week's podcast, as he and I mark Elton John's first appearance on the show by talking about 'Goodbye Yellow Brick Road'. We get into the ins and outs of Elton's partnership with Bernie Taupin, how much the songs reflect Bernie's point of view over Elton's, Colin's own insights on how to keep a creative partnership together over multiple decades, the beautiful 'naffness' of Elton's music, whether it's becoming more acceptable to sing explicitly about same sex relationships in pop music and a great rollicking chat about the Elton biopic Rocket Man and why we feel like it was far superior than Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody.

Today one Australia's most compelling artists, Mo'Ju, joins me for a celebration of the love child of Raymond Chandler and the Cookie Monster, Tom Waits, and his classic 1978 album 'Blue Valentine'. We talk about the Tom Waits musical universe, how Waits uses a clearly defined persona to keep his private life private, the film noir sensibility that pervades Waits' lyrics, how Mo'Ju chased the sound of Waits' records in her early music, how Waits made the grotesque and the mundane beautiful, the different definitions of authenticity in art, double standards around lyrical content for different types of artists and much more.