Feels Like Hell, the third full-length from Portland, Maine trio Weakened Friends, is a remarkable record for its intense backstory alone. Vocalist Sonia Sturino invited bassist Annie Hoffman to start the band a decade ago while Hoffman, at the time, was dating Adam Hand, a drummer in a different band. But then Sturino and Hoffman fell in love and got married. Far from running away from the situation, Hand was a good friend and offered his support to the pair, and when the band’s original drummer left, he joined.
Propelled by heightened, visceral emotions, Feels Like Hell consists of 11 original songs that are driven by the band’s trademark graceful bitterness, and is rounded off by a version of Ednaswap’s “Torn,” which, of course, was popularized by Natalie Imbruglia and her ubiquitous 1997 cover of it.
To celebrate the release of Feels Like Hell a couple of weeks ago, Hoffman and Sturino sat down to talk about what went into the making of the record, and how they decided to just not give a damn about what anybody else thought about what they were doing.
Everybody’s probably going to ask you this, but how does it feel to have your relationship history front and center when it comes to promoting Feels Like Hell?
Hoffman: No, you’re the first. I’m surprised.
Sturino: We’re queer, so I feel like people are like, “Oh yeah, that just sounds like classic gay people doing their thing. They’re all friends—that’s great.”
Hoffman: I wasn’t not thrilled with the pitch for the bio, because I’m kind of at the center of it, but it is our story. It’s how we fell in love.
Sturino: Part of me is always like, “Leave your personal lives out of band promotional stuff,” and I’ve always stood by that, but I also want people to see it as a positive.
Hoffman: And all’s well that ends well. You and I are happily married, Adam has been a supportive friend through it all, so it’s all good.
There still seems to be a lot of bitterness on this record, especially in “Smoke and Mirrors.” Are these songs channeling something else beyond your relationship?
Sturino: I think in order to write about these harder emotions, it comes from a place where I do feel very comfortable, and I feel like I’m in a spot where I’ve found my peace. I have Annie, and in that caring relationship—and in a lot of my caring friendships and with my family—I’m able to go to those darker places. Whether they’re about past relationships or just things I’m seeing around me or friendships that are not great, I can really dive into them without feeling so viscerally affected by it. Because I’m actually operating out of a place where I’m safe.
It’s interesting you bring up “Smoke and Mirrors” because for me, that derives completely from work and platonic relationships. There was never a romantic thing—it was more some toxicity and watching someone who, ultimately, is a narcissist out in the world and how they do their thing. Because how many times in life—or in any situation, even platonic—have you let yourself fall victim to charm?
Do you think you need to suffer for your art? You mentioned writing from your safe space, but you can still use dark times as inspiration when you do that.
Sturino: I don’t think you need to. I’ve always written some of the saddest things when I’m not actually experiencing them. I’ve always felt emotions pretty strongly—like my emotional vision is turned up to beyond Technicolor. A lot of people say, “Your songs are dark, they’re sad, they’re about burnout and negativity,” and I think it does feel cathartic to put that into song and scream your head off about it. But at the same time, I don’t do the thing where I make myself tortured in order to achieve that.
Hoffman: You could have the absolute truth in a song that doesn’t need to be autobiographical. And I think that it makes for some of the best writing. It’s similar to comedy or writing scripts—you’re a human, you go through the gauntlet of human emotion, and you have all these other people around you, or you read books or take in other art. Being inspired and being able to just observe things in a creative way is what ends up being the output of art. And when you can feel those emotions really big, you’re not just observing them for yourself, but for the people around you.
It’s been 10 years since Weakened Friends began. How would you say the purpose of the band has changed in that time?
Sturino: I had a complete mindset shift between our last record and this one where I decided—and this is going to sound kind of bad—that I didn’t really fucking care what happened. I just wanted to write the songs. In the past, I would always get in my own head about the success of the band and the shows we’d get and the tickets we’d sell—it’s always in your brain, because you’re still trying to do this as a career. But I think when we started finally writing for this record, I was like, “I really don’t fucking care if people like it or not. I really don’t care if this is the last record I ever make. I’m just going to write it and it’s going to be fun, and it’s going to be my truth.”
What’s interesting is that’s exactly how this band started. But then you start to get opportunities and you start thinking about making these career-driven moves and you become envious, and it’s just shitty. When I first started this band it was because I’d been in a band that was starting to go on that trajectory and I wanted to stop and just have fun making music. And then this band lost that along the way, so coming into these songs and this writing process, I just wanted to have a good time, write songs that feel good to write, and not think too much.
Sonia, you came out as gender non-conforming during the process of making this record. How much impact did that have on the making of these songs?
Sturino: It’s something I’ve always deep-down known about myself. I just find gender kind of stupid, honestly. For most of my adult life I’ve felt this anxiety when it comes specifically to my voice, this sense that I have to make myself sound more feminine. I didn’t really like that lower range, and I felt like that was something off-putting—or even just yelling on a record. I think voices should just sound however the fuck voices sound and however somebody defines themselves shouldn’t matter. I don’t think it’s changed a ton on the sound, but it’s made me definitely feel more comfortable and allowed me to openly explore things that I think in the past I would’ve been more anxious about doing. I’m not performing gender anymore—which is great, because I’m frankly tired of performing being a human.
