Cabin Essence
| "Cabinessence" | |
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| Song by The Beach Boys | |
| from the album 20/20 | |
| Released | February 10, 1969 |
| Recorded | October–December, 1966, Gold Star Studios and CBS Columbia Square November 20, 1968, Brian Wilson's home studio, Los Angeles |
| Length | 3:34 |
| Label | Capitol |
| Songwriter(s) | Brian Wilson, Van Dyke Parks |
| Producer(s) | The Beach Boys |
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| "Cabin Essence" | ||||
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| Single by The Beach Boys | ||||
| from the album The Smile Sessions | ||||
| B-side | "Wonderful" | |||
| Released | June 15, 2011 | |||
| Format | 7" | |||
| Label | Capitol/MOJO | |||
| Songwriter(s) | Brian Wilson, Van Dyke Parks | |||
| Producer(s) | Brian Wilson | |||
| The Beach Boys singles chronology | ||||
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"Cabinessence" (or "Cabin Essence") is a song written by Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks for the American rock band the Beach Boys released on their 1969 album 20/20. It was originally conceived for release on the unfinished album Smile.
The subject of the song is said by Wilson to be "about railroads," as he intended to encapsulate the image of Chinese laborers pounding rail spikes while their minds go "off on a different track" after noticing a crow flying overhead. According to journalist Nick Kent, the song "juxtaposed both highly-advanced Western and Eastern musical references" with an "oriental presence", making use of the banjo and harmonica as well as percussion in the chorus designed to emulate the sound of workers assembling train tracks.
"Cabinessence" has received much acclaim over the years as the stand-out track on 20/20. Biographer Jon Stebbins observed the song's "demonic chanting" which he believed exemplified "some of the most haunting, manic, evil-sounding music the Beach Boys ever made".MOJO described Cabinessence as "Smile in microcosm. Vast in scope, unprecedented in its ambition and as much an unsolved sonic riddle as the album it had been written for, this was the misunderstood masterpiece that caused Mike Love to crack and the project to flounder."
Brian Wilson stated that he and Van Dyke Parks wrote the song along with "Heroes and Villains" "Wonderful" and "Surf's Up" in a giant sandbox with a piano in it that Wilson had built in his living room.. "Cabinessence" was one of a number of Smile tracks which contained lyrics that the other band members did not approve of, being infamously oblique and replete with wordplay. The seemingly-surreal couplet of the closing "Grand Coulee Dam" section are as follows,
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