Eric Nisenson wrote that on "Chasin' the Trane", "Coltrane's playing is the most intensely emotional of his career... Analyzing the tune technically is beside the point - it is an experience, a catharsis shared by Coltrane and his audience, and it is unlike anything that preceded it... 'Chasin' the Trane' is especially hair-raising because it is clear that Coltrane has dug deeply into his psyche to create this music - 'cleaning the mirror,' as he would put it a few years later. The music sounds as if it is a portrait of the raw stuff of his inner being, music so frankly confessional we feel slightly embarrassed listening to it. It is, in its subjectivity, in the tradition of the most innovative twentieth-century art and literature. This type of inner-driven improvising was key to Coltrane's quest. By looking within, he was trying to find a center of both that musical 'essence' and the mind of God. From here on, most of his music would similarly be a result of his 'cleaning the mirror.'"