"Rather than trumpet the album's immense influence on subsequent generations of indie rockers, emo kids, and doom-metalheads alike, everything about this set works the other way to disassemble a quote-unquote classic into its basic raw materials. The demos practically break down Spiderland on a riff-by-riff basis, as we hear the songs devolve from pre-production dress rehearsals to rudimentary acoustic sketches recorded on cassette. The visual materials, meanwhile, trace Spiderland's genesis back through the unheralded but highly fertile 80s Louisville post-hardcore community (which served as a sister scene to the Touch & Go/Drag City stables in Chicago)".