Jeffrey Runnings didn’t just play in For Against, he was For Against. For four decades, through every lineup change, each hushed anthem, and all the miles from Lincoln, Nebraska to the outer edges of post-punk's cult canon, Runnings held the center. He was the songwriter, the voice, the vision. And now, with his passing from cancer on March 3, 2025, at the age of 59, that vision reaches its elegiac end with Piqued, his final album.

Recorded alone at home on a trusty 8-track cassette machine, Piqued sounds like a late-‘80s mixtape made in solitude - equal parts diary and devotional. It’s Runnings channeling a lifetime of obsessions and influences, from Young Marble Giants and Section 25 to early 4AD cuts, and filtering them through a stark, minimal lens that only makes the emotional weight hit harder. These are his final transmissions, stripped of everything but truth.

The release comes full circle with Independent Project Records, the label that took a chance on a fan letter from a teenage Runnings back in the mid-’80s. That letter kicked off a relationship that would span 40 years and help birth some of the most beloved deep cuts in American post-punk. From Echelons (nominated for a Grammy for its striking visual design) to fan favorites like December and In The Marshes, Runnings and IPR founder Bruce Licher built something rare: a bond rooted in art, trust, and the thrill of shared discovery.

Licher remembers the mix tapes and handwritten notes Jeff mailed well into the 21st century. “Even now, when he sent me his new album to hear for the first time, it was on a cassette tape,” he says. “I couldn’t have asked for anything more special.”

Born in Omaha, raised on a steady diet of import singles, piano lessons, and a collector’s curiosity, Runnings played guitar left-handed and led For Against from its beginnings in 1984 with a sound that somehow made Nebraska feel like Manchester. His music was lean and deliberate, as emotionally precise as it was sonically reserved. As Pitchfork’s Ned Raggett once noted, For Against “deserve recognition for their early-adapter approach to post-punk, as well as for sticking with it until and after everyone finally came around.”

Piqued is more than a farewell, it’s a quiet declaration from a lifelong listener who turned his influences into something uniquely his own. The album is available on black or transparent magenta vinyl, with a bonus 4-track EP of rare late-‘80s material - two of them previously unreleased - pressed on clear silver vinyl. For the CD edition, those tracks appear as bonus cuts.