MISTER BLISTER

What came first, the blister or the reason you kept running anyway?

I'm three miles into MISTER BLISTER when the hot spot starts developing on my right heel. That burning sensation that tells you to stop, to walk it off, to be smart about this. But Nico Vega's "Wildman" opened with that primal scream energy, and now I'm in too deep. The playlist has momentum. The blister has momentum. What's the difference between pain you run through and pain you run from? I've been trying to figure that out for years.

Here's what I know about this playlist: it's built on neo-psychedelic chaos, southern gothic grit, skate punk velocity, and stoner rock haze. Genres that shouldn't coexist but do, like relationships that made no sense on paper but worked until they didn't. Nico Vega, Husky Loops, Sun Drug—artists who understand that discomfort is just another word for transformation. Or maybe I'm overthinking it. That's what blisters give you: time to spiral.

"Wake Up" hits and I'm thinking about every morning after a breakup where you wake up and momentarily forget it happened. That three-second grace period before reality floods back in. The track builds with this relentless forward motion, and your legs respond even when your brain says quit. That's the thing about running to neo-psychedelic music—it disorients you just enough that you can't tell if you're running away from something or toward something. I've never been good at knowing the difference.

By "Anaana," the stoner rock influence becomes obvious. Thick, sludgy guitars that feel like running through humidity, through resistance itself. Your pace slows but you're working harder. Every relationship I've had felt like this at some point—moving forward but feeling stuck, momentum without progress. The southern gothic elements creep in around track four, "What Do You Want," and suddenly this playlist isn't just about physical pain. It's asking uncomfortable questions. What DO you want? From running, from music, from the person who isn't there anymore? I still don't have good answers.

"Last Resort & Spa" is where the skate punk DNA shows up. That Epitaph Records energy—Pennywise, NOFX, the bands that understood velocity as therapy. You can't think when you're moving this fast. That's the point. The blister is definitely there now, definitely getting worse, but the tempo is carrying me. Dick would tell you the exact lineage of this sound, trace it back through Touch and Go Records and SST. Barry would argue about which era did it better. I just know it works at mile four when you need to stop thinking and keep moving.

Top 5 moments where physical pain and emotional pain become the same thing:

1. "Tempo" at track six—when the title becomes instruction and you realize you've been matching your stride to your heartbreak for years. The beat dictates everything: pace, breath, how long you let yourself feel it.

2. "Camino" hitting right after—the road itself becomes the subject. Every run is a camino, a pilgrimage toward or away from something. Usually both simultaneously.

3. "Gravity" pulling you down around the halfway point. Physics and relationships follow the same laws: what goes up, what pulls you back, what holds you in orbit even when you should leave.

4. "Cat & Mouse" capturing the exact dynamic of every almost-relationship I've had. The chase, the reversal, the exhaustion of never knowing who's running from whom.

5. "In My Way" as the mantra of every self-sabotaged romance. The call is coming from inside the house. The blister is self-inflicted. You laced up the shoes anyway.

The psychedelic rock elements intensify through the back half. Acid rock swirl on "Ugly Ending"—which, let's be honest, is redundant. Endings are ugly or they're not endings. "Road Less Travelled" arrives with that Robert Frost bullshit everyone quotes at graduations, but running teaches you the truth: the road less travelled is less travelled because it's worse. It's rockier, harder, lonelier. You take it anyway because the popular path reminds you of everyone who walked away.

"Dead" should be too on-the-nose for track thirteen, but the stoner rock haze makes it feel inevitable rather than dramatic. By this point the blister has definitely broken. There's wetness in your shoe, that specific sensation of skin giving up. You're not stopping. The playlist has three tracks left and momentum is all you have.

"Social Candy" and "No Sympathy" close with zero sentimentality. No triumphant finish line energy, no pump-up conclusion. Just the acknowledgment that you ran, you hurt, you kept going. That's it. That's the whole thing. Every run, every relationship, every playlist you make trying to understand either one.

I limp home, shoe off before I'm through the door, blister angry and inevitable. Was it worth it? Wrong question. The blister existed whether I ran or not—it's called MISTER BLISTER for a reason. The playlist didn't cure anything, didn't solve anything, didn't make me faster or smarter or better at relationships.

But for thirty-two minutes, the pain had a soundtrack. And sometimes momentum—even painful, blister-inducing, probably-should-have-stopped momentum—is enough. What came first, the music or the misery? After fifteen tracks, I still don't know. But I know which one got me home.