Forming in 1986 in Louisville, Kentucky, Slint had met as teenagers playing in the Midwestern punk scene but soon diverged sonically from their hardcore punk roots. By the time they recorded Spiderland in mid-1990, the band had developed a complex, idiosyncratic sound characterized by atypical rhythmic meters, harmonic dissonance and irregular song structures. McMahan's vocal delivery on the record alternates between spoken word, singing and shouting. The lyrics are presented in a narrative style and cover themes such as unease, social anxiety, loneliness, and despair.
Slint formed in 1986 in Louisville, Kentucky, after the dissolution of two local bands: Squirrel Bait and Maurice. The founding members included David Pajo (guitar), Britt Walford (drums) and Ethan Buckler (bass guitar), with Brian McMahan (guitar, vocals) joining soon after their first performance. Their debut album Tweez was recorded by Steve Albini and released in 1989 on the group's self-owned record label Jennifer Hartman Records and Tapes. Buckler left the band out of dissatisfaction with Tweez, and was replaced with Todd Brashear.
Their second recording was an untitled extended play (EP) commonly referred to as Slint. Its instrumental rock sound featured on the EP, which would not be released until 1994, reflected both their new direction and increased musical sophistication since writing and recording their debut album.
The 1989 studio recordings drew the attention of Corey Rusk, co-founder of Touch and Go Records. He said that the album "was just so radically different than Tweez. ... I remember getting a tape of that and just listening to it over and over, really fucking loud." By early 1990, Rusk had agreed to pay for studio time and committed to release their next record with Touch and Go. In July 1989, two weeks after the release of Tweez, Slint supported concerts by Crain and King Kong at which they debuted early versions of the songs: "Nosferatu Man", "Breadcrumb Trail", "Good Morning, Captain" and "Washer". That June, they performed nearly finalized instrumental renditions of the Spiderland songs during a concert at the Kentucky Theater.
Throughout the summer of 1990, the band practiced the music for six new songs McMahan and Walford had written for Slint's second album. The songs were recorded in August 1990 with producer Brian Paulson, who was known for his "live" recording style and minimal takes. Paulson later said that the recording "was weird... because I remember sitting there, and I just knew there was something about it. I've never heard anything like this." McMahan and Walford wrote the lyrics at the last minute while in studio, although they had worked out the vocal melodies in advance using recordings of practice sessions and a four-track.
The album mostly explored themes of coming of age and anxiety about the approach of adulthood, and McMahan did not want the lyrics or vocal style to be heard by others until the actual recordings. He said: "I did not want to rehearse the vocals...it was a one-shot, cathartic experience."
The recording sessions were intense, fraught, and often difficult. Rumors circulated that at least one member of Slint had checked into a psychiatric hospital. Walford later said that there was no truth to such claims, although the band was "definitely trying to be serious about things, pretty intense, which made recording the album kinda stressful." The recording was completed in four days
The album's guitar work was noted for its roomy sound, angular rhythms, dramatically alternating dynamic shifts, and irregular time signatures. McMahan's singing style varies among mumbling, spoken word, strained shouting, and a written-narrative style. The lyrics were usually narrative in style, and have been described as "eerie" and having "peculiar syntax". Both the vocal melodies and words were written by McMahan and Walford after the basic tracks had been recorded during practice sessions, and often were not heard by Pajo and Brashear until their final recording in studio. The vocal additions often pulled the songs in new directions, with examples being "Good Morning, Captain" and "Washer".
McMahan was never comfortable taking the role of vocalist and only did so because nobody else in the band would. He considerably increases his range on "Spiderland", incorporating both his earlier whispered and shouting approaches with what biographer Scott Tennent describes as conventional, "actual singing".
The opening track, "Breadcrumb Trail", described a day at a carnival with a fortune-teller. The song was built from complex guitar arrangement with sharp transitions, during which the guitar fluctuates between a clean-sounding riff with harmonics in the verse to heavy and high pitched distortion in the chorus. "Nosferatu Man" was the second track and was inspired by the 1922 German Expressionist silent film Nosferatu. Its verse included a dissonant guitar riff which uses high-pitched notes similar to those in "Breadcrumb Trail" and a drumbeat centered on snare and toms.
Walford sang and played lead guitar on "Don, Aman", a deliberate anagram of Madonna. Delivered in a hushed tone, the song's ambiguous lyrics depict the thoughts of an "isolated soul" before, during, and after an evening at a bar. "Washer" was the album's longest track, and features a low volume intro with guitar and cymbals before the rest of the band joins in the recording. The song builds until the final verse, when the tension is broken by loud distortion, followed by a lengthy outro. The instrumental "For Dinner..." begans with a quiet section of "brooding chords throb[bing] with the occasional rumble of muted toms and bass drum", the song cycles through sections of building and releasing tension. The closing song, "Good Morning, Captain", has been described as a tribute to the Samuel Taylor Coleridge poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner but the band have denied this.
The title originated from McMahan's younger brother, who thought the record sounded "spidery". Its black-and-white cover photograph depicted the band members treading water in the lake of an abandoned quarry in Utica, Indiana. The photograph was taken by the musician Will Oldham, who was friends with the band and whose father had taken the photograph on the cover of Tweez.
The band had broken up by the time Touch and Go were preparing for the album's release. As a result, a planned tour of Europe was canceled and the album received minimal promotion. It thus failed to attract an audience, make an impression on college radio, or chart in either the US or the UK.
The album went virtually unnoticed by the American music press or zines. The UK music press were the first to report on the album. Edwin Pouncey reviewed it in the March 23, 1991 issue of NME, finding its sound indebted to Sonic Youth but concluding that "something original squirms at the core of Slint. Perhaps next time they'll reveal all." Albini, who produced Tweez, wrote a review for Melody Maker published the following week. He praised the music's originality and emotional intensity, as well as the clarity and immediacy of Paulson's production. He claimed that Tweez—which he produced—only "hints at their genius" but had little of the "staying power" manifested on Spiderland. He awarded the album "ten fucking stars" and predicted that it would rise in stature, writing "It's an amazing record ... and no one still capable of being moved by rock music should miss it. In 10 years it will be a landmark and you'll have to scramble to buy a copy then."
The album sold only a few thousand copies within the first year. Even a few years later it was estimated to have sold fewer than 5,000 copies. Slint remained an obscure local act in the period leading up to the album's release. By the time it came out, the band had already broken up and its members had moved on to new projects, believing that Slint would be "just another blip".
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