Jeff's Best of 2025 - #1: Weakened Friends - Feels Like Hell

We're about a decade in on Weakened Friends now, and while each album has built upon the one before it, they've always been great. Common Blah was excellent, Quitter saw one of the best songs of 2021 in "Tunnels," and the New England band was feeling like one of the best kept secrets of the area.

Somehow, Feels Like Hell does more than improve on an already-winning sound, but perfects it.

Feels Like Hell is just as much a love letter to their grungy influences (in particular, the highlight "Smoke and Mirrors"), but of the alt-power pop that many of us cut our musical teeth on ("Tough Luck (Bleed Me Out)") and of the actual pop songs of our formative years (the cover of "Torn," which was made famous by Natalie Imbruglia while Weakened Friends leans more heavily on the Ednaswap original). Even bringing on an underground-ish heavyweight in Buckethead for "NPC" feels like it fits just right.

Of the many albums I loved this year, I probably pushed this one on friends the most, and they all had a similar reaction: they loved it. This album is more than just my favorite of the year, but feels like an achievement for a band that deserves all the credit for the work they're putting out there and the work they've put in so far.

Songs of note: "Tough Luck (Bleed Me Out)," "Weightless," "Smoke and Mirrors," "Queen of Town," "Great Expectations," "Torn"