http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/28/arts/music/vince-staples-sebastian-mikael-and-girlpool-are-highlights-of-2014.html 2014-12-27 23:27:11 Vince Staples, Sebastian Mikael and Girlpool Are Highlights of 2014 Jon Caramanica explores standouts from 2014 that fell through the cracks. === Every year more excellent music comes out than can be fully documented. So here, in a perhaps futile attempt at completism, are some standouts that fell through the cracks of 2014. Vince Staples HELL CAN WAIT Few lyrics were more harrowing this year than the second verse of Vince Staples’s “65 Hunnid,” which detailed the toxicity and horror of gang life through the eyes of someone tasked to do something unfathomably awful in the name of loyalty. Here, like on the rest of his debut major label EP, “Hell Can Wait” (Def Jam), he shows himself to be a rapper of dizzying dexterity and a storyteller of heartbreaking acuity. Mr. Staples, from Long Beach, Calif., is cleareyed and unromantic in his narratives: “Never paid a toll for stripes, I earned them on them lonely nights/Mac rounds tear the house down like a poltergeist.” And he includes the police in his documentation of street mayhem on “Hands Up,” which sounds like vintage 1991 gangster rap. There’s no respite in these songs — all around him is death. “Young graves get the bouquets,” he raps on Girlpool GIRLPOOL There are (at least) two sides to Girlpool, the Los Angeles duo of Cleo Tucker and Harmony Tividad that has just released a self-titled debut EP (on Wichita, rereleased from the duo’s Bandcamp page). On the one hand, they’re interested in justice, both personal (“Jane”) and social ( Sebastian Mikael SPEECHLESS The debut album from the young singer Sebastian Mikael, “Speechless” (Slip N Slide), was one of this year’s most effervescent soul albums. Mr. Mikael — originally from Gothenburg, Sweden — sings with a beautiful flutter and just the faintest tone of pleading. “Tell me that you were meant for me/Baby please, sell me a dream,” he sings on “Thinkin’ About You Girl.” Mr. Mikael is about finesse more than power, and he’s flexible, adapting to production that includes acoustic soul (“Beautiful Life”), contemporary radio R&B; (“Crash”) and New Jack Swing revival (“Last Night,” which is an updating of “Nite and Day,” the breathy 1988 come-on by Al B. Sure!) But the high point may be The Hotelier HOME, LIKE NOPLACE IS THERE In a year with several outstanding emo albums — yes, you read that right — this was the best. “Home, Like Noplace Is There” (Tiny Engines) is the latest from the Hotelier, a band from Worcester, Mass., which is fronted by the dynamic, wordy, self-lacerating Christian Holden. It fires on all cylinders — these songs are sometimes boldly tuneful, sometimes howling ragefests and always utterly exhausting. Mr. Holden is unsparing in taking on the people who’ve failed him: “You cut our ropes/Left the umbilical/And now I carry around this weight of broken hope,” he yelps on AND HERE, 18 MORE ALBUMS AND SINGLES THAT MADE 2014 MORE TOLERABLE