Portland Phoenix | The Comforts of Disenchantment: The iconic slacker rage of Weakened Friends’ 'Common Blah'

“You don’t even notice me when I’m not around, when I don’t seem down,” Sonia Sturino sings on Weakened Friends’ new album Common Blah. The lyric is meant to be personal in the context of the track, the angsty “Aches,” with its stretchy, taffy-like guitar riffs and plaintive vocals. But if viewed from a few steps back, Sturino’s complaint could be about rock music at large in an industry that — right now anyway — really doesn’t care about it.

While that's true in the macro, Weakened Friends don’t actually have a problem with getting noticed. They’re probably Portland’s most widely popular rock band at the moment, with solid label, booking and media support and actual fans outside of the state of Maine. They don’t have to just play for their friends and family anymore, which is — sadly, perhaps — a contemporary hallmark of having “made it.” (Bands: if you’ve sold a ticket to a person you don’t know, you are basically the Beatles.) That’s just what the music industry is like now — flooded with content, most of it mediocre, with a disinterested and economically depressed consumer base.