Meltsdown by Lemon Thunder

In Meltsdown, the final chapter in the “Moonwart Trilogy”(1), Lemon Thunder face the greatest threat to their existence, while the fates of multiple universes hang in the balance! Jesse and Brandon are repeatedly flung into separate timelines where the band Lemon Thunder never even existed! They must team up with one of their oldest adversaries, The Vortext(2), to get back to the prime timeline and complete the trilogy. But first, they must impersonate caterers and fill in for the wedding band! Or did that happen later? Or not at all? Admittedly, there are some Things Out of Place.

Mick Moonwart returns to produce this final album in the trilogy. In addition to playing on tracks with his brass band The Tres Leeches, he again conducted some of the finest symphonic ensembles from around the world including the Philodendron Chamber Pot Orchestra, the Bellingham Original Outdoor Bittersweet Symphony (BOOBS), the Multiverse Orkeztra, the Fredonia Royalé Ensemble D’imbeciles (FRED) and the Stockholm Syndrømphony. And in one of the alternate timelines(3), Rick Moonheart conducted The London Symphony Orchestra.

While the album unfolds linearly, it’s creation was anything but! Both Jesse and Brandon have fuzzy memories surrounding the “catering” incident(4). And it raises more questions. Whose wedding was it? Can a cover song be a cover song if the original song never existed? What did they put in the cake?

But before those questions could even be considered, Jesse and Brandon each found themselves in different alternate timelines that ranged from the slightly different (the band was called Melon Hunter) to the more bizarre (in which “humanity” was evolved from bears(5) or the Alligaardvark world with “Everybody snappin. Snappin.”). Needless to say, that made working on the album even more of a challenge!

In one horrifying timeline, Jesse recalls, “all music is transcommodified” and “songs are made by corporate AIs, and for the most part it's just other AI critics and brokers that listen to them and trade them. The music itself has evolved bizarrely. To the human population, it sounds like high-frequency noise and static everywhere. Especially at Safeway, they really blast it there.”

Brandon and Jesse later learned they were able to communicate across timelines because bandmate AllBro is the same being across all parallel universes(6) and was able to relay their messages. They found out that the timeline distortions were caused by the Undertoad (a sentient black hole) who was being manipulated by Mr. Distorto (all in an attempt to get his sliver shirt and skinny piano tie back from Mick). AllBro was able to convince their adversary, The Vortext to help return them to the prime timeline (The Vortext agreed in exchange for making “one little change” change to the prime timeline(7)). Instead of an epic battle to restore things to “normal” it was actually a fairly complicated negotiated intergalactic intra-timeline treaty(8). But Lemon Thunder made it back just in time to release the final album in the Moonwart trilogy before the end of the year!

1. All three “Moonwart Trilogy” albums (Hurtsdays, Undertoad and Meltsdown) were released in 2024.

2. For the first appearance of The Vortext, see Lemon Thunder’s sixth album, Dark Vinyl Crystals.

3. In that timeline, Rick Moonheart added orchestration to Kurt Cobain’s third solo album and, at John Lennon’s request, reworked George Martin’s scores for the upcoming Beatles 2025 reunion tour. As a side note, Dave Grohl quit music and became a mixed martial arts champion.

4. Brandon recalls, “crashing our tour bus through a large metal gate … then stealing a catering van because the tour bus got wedged on top of a fountain? or guardhouse? Did we help bust [Mick] out of a mental institution?”

5. The bears even had a tacky, 70’s era, fad of putting human skin rugs in their living rooms (Beart Reynolds posed naked on one in PlayBear magazine).

6. AllBro explained to Jesse that he, “basically just saw the whole of existence and all of us all as averages -- not the rockstar you or the dead-in-a dumpster you, but the regular you. No earthquakes. No comets. No war.”

7. The results of the 2024 U.S. presidential election?

8. While all the details are too complicated to explain without 5D post-math math, the portion relevant to this album is that Mick agreed to allow two synth songs on Meltsdown in exchange for a Bigfoot HoppyMeal box full of OG Banana’s microgravity hydroponic hypersonic weed that he grows illegally on an asteroid using daiquiri bombs instead of water to grow it.

All of these songs began with an improvised single take. We recorded many hours worth of weirdo songs, chose the best, and assembled a Frankenstein's monster of live and dead recording techniques by mutating the arrangements, and enhancing them with cybernetic overdubs. The composition process torn asunder, this is the music of Lemon Thunder.

-- Brandon MacInnis and Jesse Reklaw