I forgot I was running at mile three. Not in the zen bullshit way runners post about on Instagram—I mean I literally stopped feeling my legs and just existed inside the noise. Crying's "Open" kicked in and my brain went somewhere else entirely. That's when I knew this playlist was working.
Here's what nobody tells you about angry music: it's not always loud. Sometimes it's Charly Bliss singing about getting crushed by suburban ennui over power pop so sweet it could rot your teeth. Sometimes it's illuminati hotties making art-punk that sounds like a panic attack set to a drum machine. The rage isn't in the volume—it's in the precision. These bands know exactly what they're pissed about, and they've done the work to articulate it in three minutes or less.
PISSEDOFFEDNESS opens with Crying, which is the first clue that whoever made this actually understands how anger works. "Open" is chiptune-inflected emo that sounds like a Super Nintendo having an existential crisis. It's the perfect warm-up track because you're not angry yet—you're just annoyed at yourself for lacing up shoes at all. By the time Bomb the Music Industry! hits with "Syke! Life Is Awesome!" you're running on ska-punk defiance and Jeff Rosenstock's patented brand of screaming-into-the-void optimism. That's the same guy who closes this thing out with "Festival Song," which is either brilliant sequencing or proof that some people never escape their own emotional loops. I relate.
Tracks three through six are the Chumped and Charly Bliss zone, and this is where I started forgetting about my legs. Chumped sounds like if Jawbreaker had more fun and less heroin. "Something About Lemons" has this guitar tone that's all bite and no reverb—very Jade Tree Records, very 2014, very much the sound of being 23 and realizing nobody's going to save you. Then Charly Bliss comes in with "DQ" and Eva Hendricks is singing about Dairy Queen like it's the end of the world, which maybe it is when you're stuck in suburbia with no car and a bad relationship. Dick would know what pedal she's using to get that fuzz tone. I just know it works.
The middle section—tracks seven through ten—is where this playlist earns its name. The Lippies, Cheekface, The Beths, Tacocat. This is indie punk for people who read Pitchfork but still go to basement shows. Cheekface's "Eternity Leave" is the most deadpan delivery of workplace anxiety I've heard since Parquet Courts, and The Beths' "I'm Not Getting Excited" is the platonic ideal of jangle-pop emotional repression. You're at mile two, maybe mile three. Your legs are lying to you about how they feel. The music is telling the truth.
Then Zach Hill shows up.
"The Primitives Talk" is where this playlist stops being a running mix and becomes something else entirely. Hill's a drummer—Death Grips, Hella, basically every experimental noise project that's ever made you question your taste. This track is all twitchy percussion and anti-structure. It shouldn't work for running. It absolutely works for running. By the time Guerilla Toss hits with "Moth Like Me," you're in full experimental chaos mode. The I.L.Y's, Black Eyes—these are bands that make noise rock sound like the only logical response to existing in 2024. Or 2004. Time is a flat circle when you're running to mathcore.
The final stretch is Boris and Dark Thoughts and Jeff Rosenstock again. Boris gives you "Woman on the Screen," which is their shoegaze mode, not their doom metal mode, so you're floating instead of drowning. Dark Thoughts strips it back to three-chord punk simplicity. And then Rosenstock closes with "Festival Song" like he's reminding you that despite all the noise and anger and experimental chaos, you're still just a person trying to figure out how to be okay. The run ends. You're back in your body. It worked, kind of.
Top 5 unpopular opinions I will die on about this playlist: One, Crying is a better emo band than most of the third-wave stuff that gets canonized. "Open" has more emotional weight than half of American Football's catalog. Two, Jeff Rosenstock opening and closing this thing isn't redundant—it's the only honest way to structure a playlist about being pissed off, because anger is cyclical and you never really escape it. Three, Zach Hill in the middle of a running playlist is genius. The chaos resets your brain right when you need it most. Four, power pop is punk. Charly Bliss proves it. If you disagree, you're thinking about the Knack, not Cheap Trick. Five, the Boris track belongs here even though it's the longest and slowest thing on the playlist. You need that shoegaze drift at the end to remember you're human.
What came first—the anger or the run? Does it matter? You put on the playlist, you move your legs, you forget you exist for 46 minutes. That's the point. PISSEDOFFEDNESS isn't therapy. It's not going to fix anything. But it'll get you out the door and through the miles, and sometimes that's enough.
