100-song playlist: shoegaze, sexy drill, krushclub, and more

People who've been following this blog and/or my Twitter for a long time might know that I've been building 100-song playlists for the last eight years. Each one is filled with exactly 100 songs that I really enjoy, and I've now created 30 of these bad boys. So yes, that's 3,000 songs that have received the Eli Enis seal of approval over the last near-decade.

The conditions for these playlists are pretty simple. If I first hear a song and some variation of the phrase, "Oh shit, this is great," runs through my head, then it qualifies for whichever playlist I'm building at the moment. I don't just toss in songs that I've already enjoyed for years, and as far as I'm aware, there're no repeats across all 30 of my Shit I Like playlists. These playlists are containers for songs that are new to me — or at least my enjoyment of these songs is new. Sometimes, I'll drop in a song I've heard before but hadn't yet connected with (see: the many classic shoegaze songs in this playlist).

There're no genre constraints to what I might include, and I don't bother sequencing the songs into any particular order. These playlists are meant for shuffling, so if you listen to the one I've got posted down below, ensure that "shuffle" is enabled and just try and roll with whatever comes through your headphones. If you're really feeling lucky, then you can listen to the Shit I Like Masterlist I've created, which combines all 30 of my playlists into one giant playlist.

But first, I implore you to check out some of the highlights from the 30th edition of this series, which I've written about down below. Naturally, I enjoy every song in this playlist, but I wanted to explain why I felt so strongly about 15 cuts in particular. If you like what I wrote in this and/or any other article I publish on Chasing Sundays, then I'd appreciate it if you subscribed at the $5/month tier. My paid subscribers (thank you!) provide me with a crucial income stream so I can maximize the number of hours I dedicate to this blog, and also just writing in general. I'm very fortunate to make my living with words, but that's getting harder and harder in this economic climate, so any support is greatly appreciated.

Bladee - "I Don't Like People" (Feat. Yung Lean)

Something I'm realizing about myself as I inch closer to turning 30 years old is that for all the ways that I've grown over the years, I'm also the same moody motherfucker that I've always been. This gleefully anti-social, narrowly not cringey introvert anthem would've made me feel seen in seventh grade if I'd first heard it then, and it still hits way harder than it should for me today. I love the way Bladee delivers the title phrase more like a blunt declaration than a musical chorus. Like he's talking about a gaggle of obnoxious hanger-ons who're standing within earshot just across the green room, in hopes that they overhear his misanthropic decree and get the message to scadaddle. I can't not laugh whenever I hear Yung Lean chirps, "I don't leave the house/stay in my crib like a newborn." And I can't overemphasize how much I enjoy hearing these guys with the vocal timbre of milk froth rap over the most pounding beat F1lthy could cook up. This one's best enjoyed alone in my car with the volume up and my foot leaning heavy on the gas.

Glaring Orchid - "blistered skin"

I've got three songs from the latest Glaring Orchid record in this playlist and their presence is well-earned. Co-released on Julia's War and Candlepin earlier this spring, the Brooklyn band's i hope you're okay is the right balance of droopy slowcore and crashing grunge-gaze, with production that's comfortingly lo-fi yet surprisingly dynamic when it needs to be. The guitars sound loud as fuck on here — in the way guitars sound when they're cranking out of a cat hair-covered cab in an unfinished garage, rattling the door and testing the strength of the cobwebbed windows. I dog on grunge-gaze a lot these on this blog but a song like "blistered skin" is what I think so many bands of this ilk are missing. Feeling. Grit. A song, not just a vibe with reverb on it. Glaring Orchid know what's up.

Chief Keef - "Too Trim"

Every line in this song is quotable. Sadly, even the horrendously misogynistic ones. My favorite one is, "Hogwarts, I got one up in the chamber." I also like, "Yeah, you ride it like a broom, you still a bird, witch." I also like this quaint piece of maternal advice Keef decided to drop in between some otherwise frigid flexes: "Mama always told me never talk to strangers/God be gettin' my dumb ass out of danger." Almighty So 2 is a shoe-in for my top 10 at the end of the year, and I think this track is the one.

Water From Your Eyes - "When You're Around"

I saw this band earlier this spring and they stomped all over whatever negative impressions I had of them going into the show. I was a casual fan of their late 2010s stuff (2018's All a Dance and 2019's Somebody Else's Song) and then fell off over their last two records. I still think their joint from last year, Everyone's Crushed, the one that got them "Best New Music" and flagged them as the latest "it" indie band of Brooklyn, is too ambitiously weird for its own good. But 2021's Structure, the album that begins with the clomping "When You're Around," is fucking brilliant. This band are a totally unique beast live; a dance-punk machine who make you shake your ass to the wonkiest beats Alan Vega never sputtered over. But then they pull out a blissful pop song like "When You're Around" and...just wow. I'll hum along forever.

Wolfacejoeyy - "Alexis Texas"

Most of the songs on Wolfacejoeyy's sexy drill opus Valentino didn't stick with me beyond my first listen, but this horndog banger buried in the album's final thrust is exactly what I want out of this emerging sub-genre. It might be the Hendrix reference in the hook that's bringing this comparison to mind, but "alexis texas" has a whiff of what made Rae Sremmurd so lovable about 10 years back. That blend of rosy-cheeked bedroom R&B and youthful street-rap bluster that only occasionally works as well as it does here.

Marluxiam - "UDNTHAVE2KNOW"

As a 29-year-old zillennial whose taste in internet rap and EDM skews more z than -ennial, I of course had to find space on my resume for "brief krushclub phase." I found this song while flipping through a 24-hour playlist in preparation for a 6arelyhuman interview I did back in May, and even after drowning my ears in this type of music for a few days, the hook of "UDNTHAVE2KNOW" still burrowed its way out of the scrum and has since been rolling around the back of my cranium like one of those Mighty Beanz. If this otherworldly Jersey club thumper doesn't make you want to dance then check your pulse.

Nettspend - "nothing like uuu"

I apologize to all of the generous 40-and-up subscribers who visit my website for opinions on indie rock, but shit like this is as much a part of my musical diet as Ride are (who also turn up in this playlist — so there). Nettspend is a 17-year-old internet rapper who might be inescapably huge in a year or completely forgotten. It's hard to say these days with the way cults of popularity are isolated from whatever's left of the rap zeitgeist. For my money, if Nettspend doesn't do another damn thing then at least he made "nothing like uuu." A song that sounds like it was born the day after Whole Lotta Red and became a man on the two-month birthday of xaviersobased's keep it goin xav. It's a finished product of the still-unfinished 2020s. It will forever ring of, "oh yeah, 2024." Click play. Be present. Enjoy the moment. What a time, right?

Lazer Dim 700 - "Awsum"

I listen to a lot of hardcore and metal music, so I have a very high tolerance for abrasive sounds. Even so, every time I listen to "Awsum" I feel like I'm in danger. The distorted synth loop on this track sounds like a beast from the arcade game Centipede is about to scuttle up my leg. Lazer Dim's delivery is disconcertingly calm. He's rapping so fast and at such close proximity to your ear that the whole mix clips, but he doesn't sound overtly aggressive. In fact, he sounds like he's just having fun. His words fling off his tongue all loose and limber-like. The juxtaposition between the eerie beat and the eerily not eerie flow is so fascinating to me. It's like you can't tell if he's fucking with you or if he's threatening you.

d0llywood1 - "Or something like that"

Listen! This is the shit I like! d0llywood1 is one of the greatest digicore artists and one of the style's premier innovators. She expressly wants to do what My Bloody Valentine did to rock music for trap — I.E. radically fuck with the body of a song until it's a possessed husk with green glowing eyes and fingers that leak computer pixels. "Or something like that" is monstrous. Uncanny. Rap music shouldn't sound like this — but now it does. There are no new noises to be made with guitars and drums and yells that discernibly emanated from a human's diaphragm. Whatever noise-rock was in the 1980s is what d0llywood1 is doing on this song in the 2020s. So fucking sick. How can you not like this? What, it's too harsh? Too disembodied? Too ear-achingly demented? That's why I love My Bloody Valentine. That's why I love this.

Lagoyo - "300"

Bong bong bong bong bing bing bing bing BOOF BOOF BOOF BOOF OOOF OOF OOF UMPHM UMPH UMPH UMPHH UMPH UNST UNST UNST UNST UNST UGH-UGH-UGH-UGH-THIS UNST UNST IS UNST UNST SO OOMPH OOMPH DOPE BONG BONG BONG BONG BONG.

RP Boo - "Say Grace"

My sister and I were driving on the highway over the summer while bumping RP Boo's Legacy Volume 2 (one of my fave albums of last year) and just nodding our heads like seagulls during each song. Just so engrossed in the oblong footwork rhythms. Mesmerized into a stupor by the way the veteran Chicago producer can stretch one shrill vocal sample across an entire song of repetitive click-clack drums and dull-as-lead bass. About halfway through "Say Grace" neither of us had said anything yet. We were awestruck by the Olympian string loop and the way the beat stabs with the threatening downward momentum of Zeus' lightning bolts. "This song is fucking crazy," she eventually remarked, and I could only laugh and sputter out the words, "God, yeah it is."

Jade - "Angel of My Dreams"

Maybe the coolest pop song I've heard all year? Definitely the coolest music video I've seen all year. Certainly the most temporally pleasurable four-on-the-floor verse beat I've heard all year. Absolutely the most unexpected bridge switch-up I've heard all year. For as much as I love Brat, it's insane to hear someone with the vocal chops Jade has trickle up and down the octaves in the way she does during this song's cloud-parting hook, only to snap back into stoic club commander form during the second verse. It's hard to envision this song playing on the radio because it seems to inhabit a world where radios never existed. A universe where this is the only song that's ever been. It fills every mall, bar, and dentist's office in every town. I wouldn't mind visiting there for a time. I don't think it's possible to tire on this tune.

Oso Oso - "all of my love"

I didn't think he could do it. I never expected Jade Lilitri to pen a more eternally sticky chorus than the one in "Reindeer Games," the song from Oso Oso's Yunahon Mixtape that sounded like it should've been spilling out of Simple Plan's or Jimmy Eat World's arena monitors for the previous two decades. I was wrong. "all of my love" is an instant contender for the best Oso Oso song yet. It's basically a verse and then three choruses conjoined at the hip. The hand-claps. The way Lilitri's voice drops down an octave during the first "life" in, "all of my liiiife." The damp acoustic strums during the hollowed-out breakdown, and the way it feels like a venue flooding with warm bodies when the full band comes back in. I think I can give this song all of my love for, let's call it...all of my life? Deal.

Kittyhawk - "Sunny Day Renter's Insurance"

What if Adventures' Supersonic Home was more Midwest emo than grunge? What if Tigers Jaw could sing just a tiny bit better? Do you wish Dowsing wrote more songs like "Midwest Living" and also sounded a little bit more like Chumped? I wish someone asked me these questions in 2014 when Kittyhawk released Hello, Again. I remember seeing their name on the handful of splits they did with slightly bigger emo bands but never gave them a proper shot when music that sounds exactly like this was my bread and butter. As it turns out, I still have a soft spot for stuff like this when the songs are as great as "Sunny Day Renter's Insurance." This song makes me feel like I loved it when I was 19 even though I didn't hear it until I was 29. The oldest thing about me is that I get achingly nostalgic for early 2010s emo revival music. (The youngest thing about me is, of course, my admiration for Nettspend.)

The Jesus and Mary Chain - "Hole"

The thing about The Jesus and Mary Chain is that they wrote many, many, many incredible, incredible, incredible songs well after Psychocandy. If you're someone who, like me, never gave their post-Psychocandy/Darklands era a proper excavation, then you're making the same grave error that I did up until this spring. Here're the rules for appreciating post-Psychocandy JAMC:

1) Accepting that Psychocandy is their best/most unique album while also understanding that their songwriting really only gets better from Darklands onward.

2) Going through a brief phase where you precariously float the contrarian take that Darklands, due to songs like "Nine Million Rainy Days," "April Skies," and "Happy When It Rains," is actually better than Psychocandy. And then having a moment of realization where you tell yourself, "No, that's not the correct opinion, but I like where your mind's at."

3) Wishing Automatic was a better record because the cover is so sick and because the blocky drum machine beats they begin incorporating on there are so badass — though not yet fully realized. They'll get there, and Automatic is still a really good record, but not a great record.

4) Realizing that Honey's Dead might be their second-best record, almost solely because of "Reverence," which is the best Jesus and Mary Chain song, and also one of the greatest shoegaze songs (yes, shoegaze, not proto-shoegaze) of all time.

5) Feeling like they kind of fell off on Stoned and Dethroned while also admitting that some of their prettiest songs are on this record. Particularly "Hole," the song I tossed in this playlist because, well, listen to it! Listen to that smoldering acoustic riff, the shaker in the background, the bottom-of-the-barrel desperation in Jim Reid's purring vocals. A song that just digs a trench in my gut every time I hear it.

6) Knowing that their pre-reunion swan song, Munki, is super underrated and that its closer "I Hate Rock N Roll" is one of the greatest pithy tell-offs of the MTV era, as well as one of the band's finest displays of room-wrecking guitar dissonance.

7) Not caring about their reunion-era material.

8) Reassessing your album ranking every time you listen to any of their post-Psychocandy records because they're all better than you remember them being.