Review 2005 / Music: There were actually some great albums in 2005 - You just have to look beyond the manufactured hype, suggests Brian Boyd

THE hundreds of thousands spent on promo. The PR militia frisking and embargoing you. The front covers, the billboards, the ringtones and the video games. The "exclusive" interviews in 85 different papers/magazines.The essential, the definitive. The talk-up and the shake down. The must-havedness of it all. But the centre just couldn't hold on so many of these putative blockbusters. From a scream to a sigh.

The stars, as always, are still underground. Something that arrived with an apologetic shrug was The Richard Swift Collection, Volume 1. Don't know the first thing about the dude - he's too alive for Mojo magazine, too obscure for Q and too crack cocaine-less for NME. The Collection, a double disc of two earlier self-released records, is one of the best things that was heard all year.

I don't know how they would rack Swift up in the record shops (if they even bother to stock him), but we humbly suggest a new genre called post-vaudeville. It's the sort of music a Quaker would compose for a circus. And that really is as close as you can get it. Order it now. More on him later.

Elsewhere, Kanye West released a truly remarkable album in Late Registration. Forgive the guitar-based retro-ness of the comparison, but it really is The White Album of hip-hop. With Fiddy Cent and those G-Unit goons getting on everyone's tits and fast becoming little more than an ongoing franchise, West still has the smarts to write a provocative anti-bling anthem such as Diamonds from Sierra Leone. One of the best albums of the last five years.

Glossing quickly over that Bloc/Kaiser/Franz cohort (you know them, but if you want something a bit different in this category, head straight to Editors' The Back Room) - and even quicker still over that migraine-inducing James Blunt and his musical satellites, KT Tunstall and Daniel Powter - something not so far removed sonically, but oceans away in terms of quality is Sufjan Stevens, whose Come on Feel the Illinoise was like a Stephen Sondheim unplugged album. Yes, that good.

Still can't work out if Antony (and his Johnsons) is anything more than Jimmy Scott with an ill-fitting wig and if Pete Doherty is the indie Gareth Gates, but no doubting the Glastonbury sunshine appeal of The Magic Numbers, the inspiring nouveau miserablism of Elbow (Leaders of the Free World) and the folked-up genius of Bright Eyes (I'm Wide Awake It's Morning). The only thing stopping young Conor Oberst, it seems, is his frequent tendency to go a bit "off-message" during gigs. A drunken rant about John Peel at this year's Glastonbury didn't do him any favours, particularly as the rant was delivered from the John Peel stage and had the indie kidz running away in tears. His makepovertyhistory line worked a bit better: "This next song is definitely going to make poverty history. Poverty - you're fucked." And you should have heard what he said to an audience in Texas in March.

Don't know what musical lab The Arcade Fire emerged from, but they got the David Bowie-fronting-Talking Heads vibe going for them from the off. If you're looking for an album of the year, you had it in Funeral; a single of the year, you had it in Wake Up. By the sound of their new stuff, they look like they're heading even further out into the stratosphere - and that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Also to be found loitering with intent somewhere between the troposphere and the mesosphere were Sigur Rós with the celestial collection that was Takk. Much was expected of that post-rock movement a few years ago, but it was usually just some droney stuff that had a nasty whiff of King Crimson about it. However, The Rós (as they're not known) know when to hold it and when to fold it. File under "Spectacular".

Such is the speed of these things that next year's big splashes are already causing ripples. The Arctic Monkeys (Pulp meets John Cooper Clarke) have already mightily impressed, as have Clap Your Hands Say Yeah (Television collide with the Factory label). Both going overground near you soon.

PICK 2005

Kanye West: Late Registration

The Arcade Fire: Funeral

Sigur Rós: Takk

Richard Swift: Collection Volume 1

Sufjan Stevens: Come on Feel the Illinoise

Bright Eyes: I'm Wide Awake It's Morning