“Rage of Travers” is longer than most Mountain Goats songs, but there’s a thematic reason for the length.

Track: “Rage of Travers”
Album: Goths (2017)

“Rage of Travers” is the longest song on Goths and, as far as I can tell, it’s one of two songs (along with “For the Portuguese Goth Metal Bands”) on the album that has never been played live. The beat is great and hits you right away, but you end up sitting with this one for a long time, obviously, as it’s almost six minutes long. Six minutes would be enough for almost all of some of the early EPs. It’s impossible to say you don’t feel the length here, but that feels intentional to me. The narrator here, Pat Travers, feels like they can’t connect with the world they once knew. We feel that loss. We sit with it.

John Darnielle mentioned “Rage of Travers” in an answer to a question about the album and said that he wanted the music on the album to be “good & interesting & harmonically complex” specifically to make the moments where you register what the lyrics are talking about more powerful. It’s the perfect explanation of why “Rage of Travers” is what it is: You are supposed to feel it more than think about it. The core of it, that this guy was huge and feels the scene shifting where he will no longer be huge, is all over Goths. It’s also tied up in so many human fears, even beyond the loss of fame that a musician would worry about. It needs to feel a little longer than the old explosion songs and stomping, screaming ones so you can take it all in.