Love American Style

New York’s Honeymoon Killers (not to be confused with the Belgian group that had the name first) were a constantly mutating project led by guitarist/vocalist Jerry Teel. Their sound was a mix of blues, punk, and noise-rock, with elements of the Gun Club, the Butthole Surfers and the Cramps, the songs slathered in feedback, mixed with recordings of New York street noise (“Night After Night”) and often played at crawling tempos (“Pain Is Easy”). On this 1985 album, they were a trio — Lisa Wells on bass and vocals, Sally Edroso on drums and vocals — and the music had a psychedelic rockabilly throb somehow improved by the players’ rudimentary skills. The women’s caterwauling vocals, balanced against Teel’s wolfman howl, bring to mind the B-52s back when they were a freakazoid art-punk project.