The worst excuse for not running is the one you're rehearsing right now. You know the script: too tired, too cold, too dark, too early, too late, too whatever. This playlist doesn't care. Press play and the excuses dissolve into King Gizzard's analog-recorded motorik groove—no warm-up, no negotiation, just forward motion recorded live at Flightless Studios with zero overdubs and zero apologies. "Le Risque" and "Shanghai" don't ask if you're ready. They assume you already started.
Then the anxiety hits. That's normal. That's tracks three through six, where Fontaines D.C.'s manic energy collides with Viagra Boys' sweaty absurdism, Warmduscher's controlled chaos, and Tony Allen's Afrobeat precision. This is the part where your brain tries to convince you to turn around. The music says otherwise. Post-punk meets polyrhythm, and somehow anxiety becomes momentum. You're not thinking about your legs anymore. You're just moving through it.
Tracks seven and eight are the Whitey assault: all-caps paranoia, electronic distortion at 140 BPM that sounds like your worst 3 AM thoughts gained sentience and learned to produce beats. "SOMEBODY GRAB THE WHEEL" and "WHEN DID I LAY DOWN AND DIE?" aren't here to comfort you. They're here to make you feel something, anything, enough to push through the exact moment you want to quit. It's ugly and it works.
Which is why "Goin' to the Beach" by Mary Shelley at track nine is perfect. After Whitey's existential screaming, egg punk simplicity arrives like oxygen. Simple drums, fuzzy guitars, zero pretension—just four people playing like the beach is twenty minutes away. This is your wall breaker. Not because it's harder or louder, but because it gives you permission to stop overthinking and just go. The radical simplicity reminds you why you started running in the first place: not for enlightenment, just to move.
The deep cuts follow—Langkamer, Dr Sure's Unusual Practice, Shtëpi—post-punk scenes you're late to discovering but work anyway because good music doesn't care about your timing. Then the finish: The Weird Sisters make noise almost pretty with melodic house textures, and Leeches close it out messy with "Bob Ross," because not every run ends elegantly and that's fine.
Fourteen tracks. Fifty-two minutes. No warm-up playlist, no cooldown required, no excuses accepted. This isn't music to think about running to. This is music that makes thinking irrelevant. The anxiety, the overthinking, the voice saying you're too tired—they're all still there. They're just quieter than King Gizzard's drums and less convincing than Mary Shelley's guitar. Press play. Silence excuses. Go.
