Photo by Justin Labadie
The first thing that stands out about Weakened Friends is Sonia Sturino’s voice – shaky, wavering, and nearly impossible to imitate if you’ve ever tried to sing along in your car on the way to a show in Cincinnati. (Guilty as charged.)
Formed in Providence, Rhode Island in 2015, Weakened Friends came together when Sturino (vocals/guitar) teamed up with Annie Hoffman (bass/vocals) and Cam Jones (drums). Their debut full-length, Common Blah, arrived in 2018 via Don Giovanni Records. Not long after, life imitated an indie coming-of-age film when Hoffman, then dating drummer Adam Hand, fell in love with Sturino and the two eventually got married. Hand would later replace Jones behind the kit in 2019.
Now, as Weakened Friends prepare to release their third album, Feels Like Hell, Sturino and Hoffman couldn’t be prouder of what they’ve created. The couple joined me on a recent Saturday morning, just before heading to the beach with Sturino’s parents, to talk about why Feels Like Hell is so special, from the current political climate that shaped its lyrics and title, to an unexpected collaboration with the elusive guitarist Buckethead, and the careful thought behind choosing which songs to release as singles.
Every band says their most recent album is the best they’ve done. I’m sure it’s recency bias. I’ve never had someone say, “The new record is good, but the last record was really the best one we’ve done.” So, tell me why you think Feels Like Hell is the best record you’ve done.
SONIA: I think Common Blah, our first record, is much better than Quitter. But I think our newest record, Feels Like Hell, is better than both and I think that’s because to get to the point where we made a record that I’m like, “Hell yeah, this is the best one for sure,” we needed the speed bump of the record in between to force out those little growing pains and get to the point. Self-discovery, and the understanding of being able to look retrospectively and be like, “What was working when we did this the first time that maybe we kind of abandoned for the second record, and now on the third record, how do we just really come into our full selves?” I think there is also the second record slump, that’s a classic thing. That’s what they say.
ANNIE: From my perspective, I record them and produce them, I think on that sophomore record, it was COVID. We had ample time. I got super nitpicky and perfectionist, and I wanted to investigate every possible sound, every possible part. I put these guys through the ringer.
SONIA: That’s not how I work at all.
ANNIE: I was happy with how it turned out, but it was a bit of a slog. We were a bit prickly with each other by the end of the process. This time around for Feels Like Hell, I released that perfectionist tendency and let the music guide where it was going to go.
SONIA: Things went so much better.
ANNIE: Things went down quickly. It felt like we were on that creative wave the entire process, and it was addictive.
SONIA: Another reason why I think our newest record is the better record is, in records past, I’m my own biggest critic and even now, a band I like will put out a record that I really like, and I’ll be like, “Oh shit, is our record even good?”
This record is the first one where, for me, there’s no skips. I’ve definitely had skips on my own past records, songs where I’m like, “I wrote it, and it seems like management likes it, or the other band members like it, so we’re going to put them on.” I 100% love each and every song on this record. I think that’s just a growing place. I don’t think I’ve ever released a record of songs where I feel completely strong. It was hard to pick singles for this one. It was just a strong record.
ANNIE: There was a lot of work at the ground level of the songs, lyrically, form-wise. Rather than just kind of going with what the skeleton already was, we made the foundation really solid before we even started building a top, and I think that really made a big difference.
I appreciate the reflection and honesty. I’ve never had a band say their own record was a sophomore slump. I’ve never had somebody say there are songs that we maybe won’t play live, or that they don’t love. That’s real life, right? Every band probably wants to say that but won’t admit it.
SONIA: I’m happy to admit my faults. I’m my own biggest critic, so I’m very aware of if something didn’t fall where I wanted it to. I mean, sometimes you don’t think so as much at the time, but it’s good to look back. It’s good to always feel like you’re growing.
ANNIE: I stand by that last record. I think it’s a good record, but it is a weaker record, for sure, in my opinion.
What was the timeline for this record?
SONIA: This one came together really quickly, weirdly enough, although there’s been a big gap. We released Quitter in 2021. The reason why there was such a big gap is because there was this long period of writer’s block for me and a lot going on with the band internally. As soon as touring came back in 2022, we were on the road so much, and there was a lot of strain in that. I feel like there were years of nothing going on creatively.
Then, this record just came together in a very fast amount of time. We started recording it last summer and finished writing it. We were done by the end of the year. It seems pretty quick for how I have always written. We started co-writing at that point, which was great, and I think that accelerated the process of seeing ideas through. I’ll start working on something, and it sounds kind of cool, but then I’ll judge it or kind of get lazy and let it dissipate back into the ether in which it came whereas Annie’s like, “No, no, no, let’s keep pulling that out. Let’s keep dusting off the sand from this fossil, and let’s see what’s actually there.” That really helped accelerate the writing process for this one.
ANNIE: You know what else accelerated the process was we had a tour coming up, so we had to finish it before we went on the road. The tour ended up getting rescheduled, which was a huge blessing. We were going into this record thinking we had very little time to make it, and I think that put the seed in our brain that we need to be efficient here.
SONIA: Annie’s really bad at deadlines – no offense, but you really are. I’m really good at saying, “This is the day we need it, we’re going to need it by that day, it needs to be done.” I’m a very organized, by-the-book, person. I have my schedule, and I stick to it, where I feel like Annie’s not that organized. So, it helped having that real deadline.
Annie, is it procrastination?
ANNIE: Yeah, I think I have ADHD. I’m not diagnosed, but I think that’s one of the hallmarks of the condition.
I’m a procrastinator so I get it.
SONIA: If a deadline is the 15th, I make my own personal deadline the 12th. I’ll have it done. I was always the kid, if I had an exam or a test the next day, I would make it a point to not study the day before. I would go do something nice and relaxing.
ANNIE: I work at a recording studio. Just before we jumped on this call, I was chipping away at something that I need to have for that mixed session today, and I’m going to have it with ample time. It’s my own self-set deadlines for things.
SONIA: That’s why we’re a good match.
Feels Like Hell is not an album full of lyrics about rainbows and kittens. Do you find yourself gravitating to writing about darker, not pretty, things or were these lyrics inspired and influenced by what has been going on the last few years related to politics and societal issues?
SONIA: Well, yeah, gestures to everything happening in the last four years. Here’s the thing, I’m in a really positive place personally in my life. I’m very grateful, and I’m lucky to have a really great life with really great people in it, and I’ve started to really practice flexing that gratitude muscle and feeling that fully, learning how to let myself enjoy that. On the flip side, I’m also a pretty smart person. I like to keep well-informed, and very much realize that things are rough as far as humanity goes right now.
If you circle back to 2023, we released a song called “Awkward,” which was the first song I remember writing where I was like, “This is going to be kind of a happy song. I want to write about having a crush.” It has the undertone of, “I have this crush, it’s scary, and I might mess it up,” but, still, you’re crushing on someone, so it’s a lighter-hearted topic. I really thought that this record would be more in that direction. I love pop music, and some of my favorite pop music has that lyrical dissonance where the song might have a really upbeat, dancey feeling, but the lyrics are actually sadder, somber.
I wanted to channel that energy more, and when we initially started writing for this record, there was a whole batch of songs that were in that vein. We were rehearsing them, and it just was not coming together. The identity of this band was just butting heads with what I was writing. I don’t know if those songs needs to be a side project at some point, but eventually, I was just like, “Where does the rock band come in?” I am just piss and vinegar as a person in a lot of ways, and this is where I get that catharsis out. This is where reading articles on NPR, listening to doom-filled podcasts, finds its way out of my literal throat and into songs. It’s how I compartmentalize the more negative or stressful emotions in my life.
In that retrospect, it’s very much of an album of the time.
SONIA: Yeah, kind of. I mean, feels like hell, right? It’s like, “Oh God, we’re living in hell.” I read something recently that was like, in 1972, they did a study which was showing that the societal collapse would happen around 2040. Recent studies from MIT have shown that we’re right on track for that. So, with that in mind… Feels Like Hell.
I listen to the Pod Save America podcast, often on my commute to work. It gets me so fired up. I’m very much aligned with them, and they bring up stuff that infuriates me, like, “All this stuff is out there, how do people not see it and take action?”
SONIA: 100%. I listen to that, and I also listen to Democracy Now!, and that podcast has an upbeat intro song and then, all of a sudden, it’s the most devastating news you’re about to hear. I listen to it when I’m on a run starting my day, and I’m like, “I’ve got to not do this.” I balance it out with comedy and silly, queer podcasts that I’m also really into, so it’s fine. There’s a balance there. You have to put something on that makes you laugh right after.
You listen to podcasts when you run?
SONIA: Yeah, for sure. I think more so podcasts than music, because music for me, unless there’s something I’m really into at the moment, like a new record, I kind of just get burnt out on stuff. I’m a “put a record on in the house” kind of gal. When I’m running, I love a podcast.
When I was in college, I had a roommate, and every time we bought a cassette or a CD, he always said the third song was always the hit. 80% of the time, he was right. That was the single that was released. You come out of the gate where the first single is the also the first song on the album. Following my roommate’s theory, “Tough Luck (Bleed Me Out)” could have been the third song, because it has that single feel to it. I love the video. It’s very colorful. Tell me about releasing that song as a first single.
SONIA: “Tough Luck” was one of those songs that felt like it came together super quickly. It was one of the last songs that we were finished as far as writing went. We were chuffed about it. That’s probably why it’s the first song on the record. It’s probably why it was the first single. We were just like, “This song rips.” It was the first song we wrote that we’re like, “This is so cool. It feels like a song someone else would have made,” so it’s like a little gift by the song gods. We were really pumped.
An interesting fact is, the third single that we released is “Nosebleed” and it’s the third song on the album. I’m so stoked with that.
Sonia and Annie discuss how they got Buckethead to play on the song “NPC”.
Sonia, do you compare the venues that Weakened Friends plays at to the venue where you work?
SONIA: The State Theatre is an amazing venue, and our staff is top of the line. It’s really a great place to work, and also just a really good venue. There are definitely times when we’re on tour where I’ll walk in and be like, “Hmm… okay, guys.” But then sometimes I’ll be like, “Wow, this venue crushes,” and I’m like, “I should go take some notes and bring that back home.” So, it really depends. I get it, the music industry and live music is not exactly well-funded. It’s harder and harder to sell tickets. Big ticketing companies are taking most of the profit, and the venues themselves are left with only so much especially at the level of band we’re at, where it’s a lot of smaller, locally owned, independent venues. The State Theatre is an 1,800 capacity, state-of-the-art venue so I try not to be too judgmental. As long as there’s a place to sit down before we play and they get us some water, I’m good.
And hummus, right?
SONIA: Oh, there’s so much hummus. Literally, the industry runs on bananas, hummus, and bottled water.
I talked to Tony from White Reaper recently, and we sort of came to the conclusion that for touring artists right now, essentially what you’re doing is you’re selling clothes, and you’re playing music as a background. You have to sell T-shirts to make the money, because you’re not making it any other way.
SONIA: Correct. I make that joke from stage all the time. I’m like, “We are a traveling merchandise company that plays music on the side.” If you look at how we file taxes, as far as the IRS is concerned, we’re a T-shirt company in the same way that venues are a beer-selling company. Bar sales are what keep venues alive.
Do you have a merch strategy? Do you have to think about the common denominator, like, just a simple black T-shirt with just the name of the band that will appeal to most people or do you do things like tie-dye shirts with huge graphics and things like that?
SONIA: Those sell well, the tie-dye shirts. I think you want to have something for everyone. Having records to sell at the merch table is always great. People love buying an actual physical LP, which is wonderful.
ANNIE: We’ll always have a black T-shirt. We’re never too lavish with the design work.
SONIA: And a tote bag. Everybody loves a tote bag.
I saw some names listed on the album and in the credits for the videos. I was going to ask if these are the same people that I think they are but, of course, they definitely are the same people I’m thinking of. I saw the names Jim Gilbert and Brian Charles who I know from being in the ’90s band The Sheila Divine.
ANNIE: I work with Brian. And he’s an amazing producer and engineer, and life coach! He’s like my older brother. We’ve worked together for 15 years. Through him, I met Jim and Aaron, all those Sheila Divine guys.
Were you familiar with them before working with them?
ANNIE: I wasn’t until I moved to Boston. They weren’t on the Pittsburgh 2005 circuit. They’re an incredible band.
The first two singles from the album are “certified bangers.” In your mind, is there something that maybe you’re not thinking of as a single, but that you’re like, undercover, “this is THE song”?
SONIA: My favorite song on the record is a song called “Queen of Town.” We’ve been playing it live. I think that the pacing of it pulls it out of the realm of being a single. In my opinion, I would have made it a single, but I think we’ve been advised it’s not the choice.
ANNIE: It’s too odd.
SONIA: But that’s why we should have made it the single. For those of you who have heard the record, hit me up if you agree. I feel like “Queen of Town” is one of the ones that I’m like, “Oh shit, that song sends.” That was one of the first ones I wrote for the record. We’ve been playing it live for a minute now, too.
ANNIE: I had a hard time picking what I thought should be the singles. I do think all of the songs are very strong. I thought “Not For Nothing” could have been a single. I thought “Lightspeed” could have been a single. Even “Great Expectations,” as strange as that one is, that kind of falls into the “Queen of Town” boat, where it’s a really good song, but very different.
I have that on my list, but before I talk about “Great Expectations,” I have “Smoke and Mirrors” and “Not For Nothing” as the two that, outside of the singles, are the ones that people should listen to if they dig deeper than just the singles.
ANNIE: “Smoke and Mirrors” is going to be the fourth single. It’ll have a video. That was high on my list as well.
What is the origin of “Great Expectations”? It is a little different than the rest of the record.
ANNIE: I was playing that bass part; it’s up really high and it’s kind of going through the whole thing.
SONIA: I had gotten one of those new little amps from Fender. We were hanging out, and I started playing guitar along to it. It came together organically. You had that hypnotic bassline, and then we started building a concept for the song. The reason why it’s called “Great Expectations” is not because it was written about the novel but as I was writing it and coming up with lyrics, Annie was like, “It seems like you’re writing about this Miss Havisham character, someone who’s had their heart broken once, or got hurt once, or had something tragic happened one time, and they’ve now made it the reason why they’ll never go out and try to live life.” They’ve kind of kept themselves hidden away, the idea of this rotting cake in your wedding dress. You’re wasting away because you’re making your pain or your trauma be the definition of your life. The lyrics come from that perspective. The lyric of “making it hell for myself,” that’s interesting too with Feels Like Hell being the album title. I kind of touched the title in different songs.
ANNIE: Also, there’s a lyric in that song, “I was fun for a while, but this girl’s gone mild.”
Oh yeah. I caught that.
SONIA: “Girl’s Gone Mild” was something I just had written in a notebook somewhere. It was funny. We were chatting, we were hanging out with our friend Slothrust in a green room, and I was describing our perfect night off for tour. I was like, “Wow, we’re like Girls Gone Mild. I should write a song called ‘Girls Gone Mild.’” When I did it, in my mind, I’m like, “It’s going to be a funny, upbeat song,” and now that lyric found its way into one of the most devastating songs. And it totally works. We were talking about calling the record Girl’s Gone Mild.
I can’t wrap this up without asking you about the “Torn” cover. Is it a song that you’ve had in your setlist for a while, and then you finally recorded it?
SONIA: A little while. Back in pandemic times, we had a Patreon and we were doing song polls, asking our Patreon people to vote on songs each month that we would cover. We were doing this song poll, and that was one of the ones that got very heavily voted in favor of. We went and recorded it, and it just clicked. The vocal felt really good, and we had this dastardly version. It lived on Patreon forever and ever. It wasn’t until early last year, we were going on tour with Slothrust again, and they did a cover of Ginuwine’s “Pony” and released it as a single. I’ve never been a covers gal. I’m like, “Ugh, I don’t want to do a cover,” because I’m a jaded prick. I was like, “I’m too cool to do a cover.” But I was like, “You know, they’ve been doing it. Their audience loves a good cover. They’ve been doing this Britney Spears cover, they did the ‘Pony’ cover. They always change it to make it their own. It seems like their audience likes that, why don’t we bring back the ‘Torn’ cover for this tour since we’re playing to that same audience? I think it could be really fun”. We started just rehearsing it, and that was the tour we started playing it. It was a very popular point in the set. That’s where finally coming to the decision of recording it and releasing it as a single came from.
How do kids know that song?
SONIA: I guess it’s one of those songs that’s just picked up so heavily into syndication, right? Anytime you walk into a grocery store, a CVS, a doctor’s office, it’s playing. Like, right now, in any pharmacy, someone is picking up their prescriptions and “Torn” is playing.
ANNIE: We live on a busy street, and someone at the light this morning was blasting “Torn.” There were a couple people in Texas that came up to me and said, “We didn’t know the song, what was it?”
I didn’t know if somehow TikTok brought the song back into circulation. I don’t get TikTok or how older songs get a new life because of the platform.
SONIA: It’s always so weird. Like, a few years ago, Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” got a resurgence. I think even Charli XCX had a huge summer last year. “Party for You,” which was a song off of her 2020 record. After the whole “Brat summer” thing, that song blew up on its own through TikTok, and it was not a single.
Have you had a viral moment for the band?
ANNIE: We had a borderline viral moment, and it was thanks to this absolutely adorable bass player on the internet named Bree.
SONIA: They were playing bass along to our song, “Peel.”
ANNIE: And it did numbers! We hit our millionth stream for that song before any of the others. Shout out to Bree!
I don’t understand how to make things go viral, but, I did record you performing one of my favorite songs of the last 20 years, “Blue Again,” when you played at the Columbus Arts Festival in 2022. It doesn’t have a million views, but we’ll work on that.
SONIA: After this interview comes out, we’ll make it go viral.
Do you think about what audiences of other bands would like your band?
SONIA: It’s tough, because I’ve always felt like we’re this outlier. We don’t quite fit properly anywhere, which I think is me as a person. I was never the cool kid. When you see those kids in high school, it’s like, there’s the goth girl, there’s the jock, the people who are just really figured out. I was always just trying to make my hand-me-down clothes from my sister fit into whatever world I was living in, an awkward hodgepodge of random crap. And I think that’s just carried through my whole entire life. It’s interesting because a lot of our friends would be like, “Yeah, I don’t really know how to describe your band.” We’re a rock band, obviously, yes.
It’s more of a song-by-song thing. If you look at a song like “Tough Luck,” I hear a big influence of mine, Metric, from Toronto, which is where I’m from. That was a huge band for me, and I feel like you can certainly hear through lines. And then you hear Garbage and people throw Veruca Salt in there for that ‘90s flair. If we’re talking “Tough Luck,” I was also pulling from Microwave. When I get to the second verse, I was like, “What would Trent Reznor do?”
Garbage was a band I was thinking of. And, I’m a huge Veruca Salt fan, they are probably a top 10 of all time for me.
SONIA: That was the first show Annie and I ever went to together in 2015, and Charly Bliss was opening. We saw them at the Paradise in Boston.
Tell me a song that takes you back to a specific time and place in your life.
ANNIE: I’m a daddy’s girl. I am my dad, and we’ve always been buddies. I was his buddy when I was little, and we just get each other. We’re both weird. He has a boat, and in the summer, almost every day we could, we’d go out on the boat. Driving down to the marina, we would listen to so many things, but one that jumps out was “Jammin’” by Bob Marley. That’s always what I wanted to put on. We’d have the windows down, sun coming in, my little stick arms that are tan in the sun, just jamming with my dad, and it’s such a big feeling in my chest. I love thinking about it.
SONIA: I’m going to say two, and they’re both very me. For childhood, a song that will just make me feel like it’s a summer afternoon, sun’s kind of going down, driving home from soccer practice, light’s coming through the leaves of the trees, very “I’m a kid again,” is the song “Ahead by a Century” by The Tragically Hip. Fast forward to being 17 or 18 years old, riding my bike around, not having a car yet, in a suburb of Toronto, where it was houses row on row. I would try to find any nature spots and just ride my bike, where you have just all this time in the world with nothing to do, and the song that takes me back to that is “Anthems for a Seventeen Year Old Girl” by Broken Social Scene. Those are big Canadian answers, but, if you’re talking nostalgia, I’m Canadian.
What are your realistic expectations for the record? What about some unrealistic expectations that maybe could happen?
SONIA: Hopefully the shows will sell better than our last set of shows. I think we’re going to, hopefully, bring in some new people, or at least offer a new record to the people we’ve been building up since our last headlining dates and since our last record. So, I think, numbers will be up as far as people and people listening.
ANNIE: I have such faith in the strength of the record, and I feel like if we’re smart, and we just keep plugging away, I would love to see us jump just one step up on the ladder, where instead of playing the 300 cap rooms, we’re playing the 500 cap rooms.
SONIA: Or instead of 3 people in Columbus, there’s 100. And I think realistically, it would be really nice to play a KEXP session. We’ve been trying, and I would really like to do that. I think it’d be cool, something I’ve wanted to do as an artist for a long time. We played Seattle a couple times, never worked out timing-wise, but now we have a new record.
Unrealistic? We play SNL.
Oasis and My Chemical Romance were the two big reunions this year that sold a ton of tickets. Is there a reunion or an artist that hasn’t toured in a long time that you’re dreaming of seeing?
SONIA: Kate Bush. She had done a few shows in London, I want to say in 2012. I was already a massive fan. I tried to get tickets but didn’t. I was going to fly out and go by myself, which I don’t really do for anything. That’s probably the artist I would be like, “Oh shit, I have to do whatever I can to go see them,” because I just feel like she’s an enigma and not someone who even ever toured.
ANNIE: I can’t think of a single active, living artist that I would get off the couch and get on a plane for. We live in Boston. They’ll come to Boston. If they resurrected Kurt Cobain and Nirvana was playing a set anywhere, I’d go.
Oh, you know what? I did drive all the way down to Providence, not that that’s far, to see Fleetwood Mac when Christine McVie was with them. I love Fleetwood Mac, but I don’t think I’d get on a plane to see them.
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Tour Dates
10/16 – Troy, NY – No Fun
10/17 – Rochester, NY – Bug Jar
10/18 – Toronto, ON – The Sound Garage
10/22 – Cincinnati, OH – Radio Artifact
10/23 – Chattanooga, TN – The Boneyard
10/25 – Gainesville, FL – THE FEST
10/29 – Charlotte, NC – Snug Harbor
10/30 – Durham, NC – The Pinhook
10/31 – Atlanta, GA – Altar at the Masquerade
11/01 – Greenville, SC – Swanson’s Warehouse
11/05 – Cudahy, WI – X-Ray Arcade
11/06 – Chicago, IL – Beat Kitchen
11/07 – Detroit, MI – Lager House
11/08 – Cleveland, OH – Grog Shop
11/09 – Columbus, OH – Ace of Cups
11/12 – Pittsburgh, PA – Bottlerocket Social Hall
11/13 – Washington, DC – Comet Ping Pong
11/14 – Philadelphia, PA – Nikki Lopez
11/15 – Brooklyn, NY – The Sultan Room
11/16 – Amherst, MA – The Drake
11/20 – Cambridge, MA – The Sinclair
11/21 – Burlington, VT – Higher Ground Showcase Lounge
12/05 – Portland, ME – State Theatre
12/12 – Los Angeles, CA – The Wiltern &
& w/ Buckethead
