Best of KC 2020: Local legacy bands are coming back hard

Shiner, Ultimate Facebook, and Giant’s Chair. // Illustration by Kelcie McKenney.

This month, we published The Pitch’s annual Best of Kansas City issue. You can browse the results of the readers’ poll here. The issue also included a list, compiled and written by our editorial staff, of some of our current favorite things about Kansas City in 2020. We’ll be publishing these items online throughout November. 

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While we didn’t know it at the time, Giants Chair’s release of Prefabylon in early December of 2019 marked the beginning of a year of comebacks. The post-rockers’ album on Spartan Records—their first in 23 years—was the first of a series of returns from local legacy acts. Next came Ultimate Fakebook’s The Preserving Machine in mid-April, marking the Manhattan power-pop rockers’ first new recordings in 16 years, followed quickly by Shiner’s Shadenfreude in May, with emo vets Casket Lottery’s Short Songs for End Times almost perfectly book-ending the year when it releases on Wiretap Records, Big Scary Monsters, and Second Nature Recordings this month. It’d be tempting to describe our embrace of these releases as embracing nostalgia during rough times, but the fact of the matter is that these records are the equal of anything any of these four bands released during their respective heydays. It’s been a glorious return and rebirth of bands, reminding us just why we loved them in the first place.