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Anyone who caught Weakened Friends on various stages over the past few years — from house parties to Boston Calling — knew the Portland band were about become quite the signing for the right label. That label, we learned today, is Don Giovanni, which will be releasing the indie trio debut LP, Common Blah, on October 19.
The New Jersey-based Don Giovanni is, and has been, home to bands like Screaming Females, Waxahatchee, Laura Stevenson & The Cans, and others. And it feels like a perfect fit for Weakened Friends’s charged guitar-rock.
This signing news would be killer enough, but Don Giovanni is upping the ante by accompanying their word with a freshly polished Weakened Friends track, titled “Blue Again”, and a slate of European and North American dates that hits Paris’ Pitchfork Music Festival on October 30 and Great Scott in Allston on November 15.
And the title of the band’s new album is one we all can relate to.
“Sometimes, things look good on the outside, but they’re not working,” songwriter Sonia Sturino says of Common Blah. “That’s how it used to be for me. I’d hear, ‘You have a really cool job. You live in a cool city. Your band is cool.’ It was ‘Common Blah’ though because I was miserable. I didn’t care. Now, I’m at the other end of the spectrum. People do something that they think they’re supposed to do when it’s not what they should be doing and it doesn’t make them happy. In a lot of ways, this is the first time I’ve found happiness. I wrote the lyrics about the time before that happiness.”
Get into it below.
Weakened Friends 2018 Tour Dates
August 31 – Halifax, NS @ The Seahorse Tavern
September 01 – Bar Harbor, ME @ Lompoc
September 3 – Syracuse, NY @ Spark Art Space
September 14 – Waterbury, VT @ Zenbarn
October 19 – Portland, ME @ Port City Music Hall *
October 20 – Brooklyn, NY @ Trans-Pecos *
October 21 – Richmond, VA @ The Capital Ale House *
October 24 – Raleigh, NC @ Kings Barcade *
October 25 – Asheville, NC @ Fleetwoods *
October 26 – Atlanta, GA @ Smith’s Olde Bar *
October 27 – Gainesville, FL @ THE FEST *
October 30 – Paris, FR @ Pitchfork Music Festival
October 31 – Brighton, UK @ The Hope & Ruin
November 2 – London, UK @ Line of Best Fit
November 8 – Chicago, IL @ Beat Kitchen *
November 9 – Detroit, MI @ Deluxx Fluxx *
November 10 – Toronto, ON @ The Monarch *
November 11 – Montreal, QB – Casa del Popolo *
November 14 – Burlington, VT @ Higher Ground Showroom *
November 15 – Boston, MA @ Great Scott *
November 16 – Philadelphia, PA @ Everybody Hits *
November 17 – Washington, DC @ Songbyrd *
* w/ Nervous Dater