The Metro, 2007. Enter Shikari opening for someone I can't even remember now, playing "thē kĭñg" to maybe fifty people who had no idea they were watching post-hardcore reinvent itself in real time. Rou Reynolds was on the barricade, screaming about systems and symmetry, and I remember thinking: this shouldn't work. Electronics and breakdowns and politically charged spoken word shouldn't coexist. But it did. That's the thing about August in the midwest—it doesn't ask permission to be three different seasons in one afternoon.
This playlist operates on the same principle. Fourteen tracks, 46 minutes, genres that have no business sharing the same running route. Indie punk crashes into metalcore, riot grrrl elbows past ska punk, and somehow mgk's "bloody valentine" closes the whole thing out like it was always meant to end there. It's the sonic equivalent of leaving your apartment in a hoodie and coming home in a tank top, cursing the lake wind that shifted while you weren't paying attention.
Enter Shikari bookends the first act—"thē kĭñg" into Otha's "Tired and Sick" into "Radiate"—and it's all kinetic energy with zero apology. Reynolds produces most of his own work, and you can hear it: the compression is aggressive, the electronics don't sit politely in the background, everything fights for the same space. Dog Party's "Best Friend" follows, and suddenly you're in garage punk simplicity, two-piece drums and guitar recorded like it's 1997 in someone's basement. That shift—from Shikari's maximalism to Dog Party's stripped-down urgency—is the entire thesis statement. August doesn't transition smoothly. It just changes.
NOBRO's "LALA" and The Queers' "See You Later Fuckface" land mid-playlist, and this is where the chaos becomes structural. NOBRO's on Dine Alone Records, part of that Toronto punk resurgence that sounds like Bikini Kill if they'd grown up on skate videos instead of Olympia basements. The Queers are pure Lookout! Records lineage—Joe King wrote "See You Later Fuckface" as a middle finger to everyone who ever told him pop punk had rules. Two different decades, two different coasts, same refusal to soften anything.
Then the playlist does something sneaky. Simple Creatures' "Special" (Mark Hoppus and Alex Gaskarth, in case you forgot blink-182 and All Time Low tried to make a supergroup) gives you thirty seconds of melody before Dinosaur Pile-Up's "Back Foot" kicks you back into distortion. Reuben's "Blamethrower" follows—a band that broke up in 2008 after three albums that nobody outside the UK hardcore scene remembers, but if you know, you know. Jamie Lenman's production on that track is all midrange crunch, no breathing room, the kind of mix that makes your stride tighten up whether you want it to or not.
Gender Roles' "Bubble" hits at track eleven, and this is the part where the run stops being about the run. You're past the point where form matters, past the point where you're thinking about pace. Gender Roles sounds like Weezer if Rivers Cuomo had grown up angry instead of nerdy, and "Bubble" is all antagonistic pop hooks—verses that shouldn't resolve but do anyway, choruses that feel like arguments you're losing. It's the sonic embodiment of realizing you're still running even though you stopped wanting to three songs ago.
Then Enter Shikari returns with "{ The Dreamer's Hotel }"—track twelve, the comedown that isn't really a comedown. It's slower, more atmospheric, but Reynolds still can't help himself; halfway through, the electronics build and the breakdowns sneak back in. Angels & Airwaves' "The Adventure" at thirteen feels like Tom DeLonge trying to convince you (and himself) that earnestness still matters in 2006. It's the only track on this playlist that sounds hopeful. It's also lying.
mgk closes with "bloody valentine," and look—I know. Machine Gun Kelly doing pop punk cosplay, the guy who feuded with Eminem and then decided Travis Barker could save his career. But here's the thing: it works. Not because it's authentic (it's not), but because August doesn't care about your taste hierarchy. The track is produced within an inch of its life, every guitar tone polished, every backing vocal stacked, and after thirteen tracks of raw punk energy and metalcore breakdowns, that glossy sheen feels like the moment you stop running and realize your shirt is soaked through and you can't remember the last two miles.
Top 5 Songs That Sound Different When You're Moving:
1. **"Blamethrower" by Reuben** — In your apartment, it's just a loud UK hardcore track. At mile four, when your breathing matches the kick drum pattern, it becomes a instruction manual for not stopping.
2. **"{ The Dreamer's Hotel }" by Enter Shikari** — Static, it's Shikari going ambient. Moving, it's the false summit—the moment you think you've crested, but the hill keeps going.
3. **"Cassiopeia" by Rina Mushonga** — On headphones at your desk, it's understated indie. On the trail, when your legs are already tired, it's the exact permission you need to slow down without quitting.
4. **"Back Foot" by Dinosaur Pile-Up** — Sitting still, the guitar tone is just aggressive. Running, it syncs to your footstrike and suddenly you're not tired, you're pissed off, which turns out to be the same thing as fast.
5. **"The Adventure" by Angels & Airwaves** — DeLonge's earnestness sounds overproduced until you're oxygen-deprived and suddenly "everything about you resonates happiness" doesn't sound corny, it sounds like a dare.
**Honorable Mention:** "See You Later Fuckface" by The Queers—a song that has never once been improved by context, but at least when you're running you have an excuse for why you're grinning like an idiot.
What came first, the chaos or the playlist that soundtracks it? August doesn't answer that question. It just shows up, humid and unpredictable, and makes you run through it anyway. This playlist does the same thing. Forty-six minutes, no apologies, no smooth transitions. Just a record store clerk's fever dream of what happens when you stop organizing by genre and start organizing by what the weather feels like when nothing makes sense.
I still don't know if this playlist is about running or about the specific kind of Midwestern stubbornness that makes you keep going when every signal says stop. Probably both. Probably neither. Probably it's just fourteen tracks that refuse to fit together, which is exactly why they do.
