Slint

Louisville

Slint formed in the summer of 1986 in Louisville after Squirrel Bait and Maurice broke up; Brian McMahan and Britt Walford had played together as pre-teens and in Squirrel Bait, and David Pajo and Walford had been in Maurice. The name came from one of Walford's pet fish, and their first show, on November 2, 1986, was for a Unitarian Universalist congregation under the name Small Tight Dirty Tufts of Hair. Tweez (1989), recorded by Steve Albini, came out on Jennifer Hartman Records and Tapes.

Spiderland (Touch and Go, 1991, 39:31) was recorded over about four days in August 1990 at River North Studios in Chicago by Brian Paulson. It did not chart in the US or UK and sold a few thousand copies a year for years, yet Metacritic scores it 99, Pitchfork gave the 2014 box set 10 of 10 and ranked the album 12th among albums of the 1990s, and Albini gave it top marks in Melody Maker. The band reformed in 2005 and played until 2014; setlist.fm shows 98 setlists, the latest at the Rickshaw Theatre in Vancouver on August 29, 2014.