Psychedelic Sunday service resumes with “The Trip” from The Dupont Circles “In Search of the Family Gredunza” album released late 2020:

The Dupont Circles are a Washington DC psychedelic garage pop band and “The Trip” meets all the classic garage-psych requirements from thrashing guitar to swirling organ, and, in the this case, explorations of the inner mind with the help of psychedelic pharmaceuticals.

The album is a career-spanning compilation as the track-listing is made up of three eras of the band, starting in 1990 and running through to the present day. Constants in the evolving line-ups are main songwriter Michael Bennet (guitars and organ) and Bob Primosch (drums and vocals).

They were formed originally as The Spills in 1988 in Washington D.C. and soon morphed into The Dupont Circles. Early recordings include several rare 7” singles on the Cara Records label and after that several appearances on compilations, on labels like March Records, Planting Seeds Records, Japan’s Rover Records, and Italy’s Lost In Tyme label. That was the kind of glacial pace the band have operated to over 30 years – the odd single or track on a compilation.

While there’s obviously a Pebbles/ Nuggets type vibe the the band and the songs, there’s also a link to the sounds of the garage-psych revival in the UK in the second half of the 1980s. UK Label Bam-Caruso did it’s own “Rubble” series of psych compilations, and it was the heyday of bands like The Thanes and the Television Personalities. The Dupont Circles do a fine line in that very British kind of wry or whimsical everyday life observational songwriting.

The Dupont Circles “In Search of the Family Gredunza” is another fine release on Canadian label The Beautiful Music.