The Wisdom of Harry, "Unit One"
I will look up little biographical details on acts when I'm doing this, to make sure I've got years right, or to spell names correctly, or whatever. And in the process, I'll see some of what others have written about bands sometimes. When I did that for the Wisdom of Harry to check when this album came out (2000, which was earlier than I remembered), I noticed that the writer there compared this band to Mogwai, My Bloody Valentine, and Catherine Wheel. Uh.
M83, "Tension"
(listens to M83) I'm getting real hints here of early Metallica, some Slayer, maybe a little bit of mid-period Iron Maiden.
Whiskeytown, "Here's To the Rest of the World"
I was going to write a little thing here about how alt-country acts seem especially volatile, comparing Whiskeytown's explosion to Uncle Tupelo's. And then I realized...that's kind of the list off the top of my head for alt-country bands that blew up like this. So, uh, I guess that's that for that theory.
The Ocean, "Mesopelagic: Into The Uncanny"
The Ocean's 2013 epic, Pelagial, is a concept album written around the layers of the ocean. So up towards the surface, it's still pretty bright and pretty, but as you descend, it gets murkier and murkier. This, the second track (the mesopelagic layer) is still pretty sunny, as things go. It all sounds pretty corny, but they have the chops to pull it off, and if you just relax and go with it, it's a very fun record.
Ghostface Killah, "Whip You With A Strap"
I don't hear a lot about Ghostface's mid-90s albums. And, sure, they're not Supreme Clientele, but there's a lot of really good stuff on them. One of the things that he did a lot of was use super prominent soul loops, resulting in a competition for attention that would be distracting with lesser MCs. But he pulls it off with aplomb.