"Cabinessence" (also typeset as "Cabin Essence") is a song by the American rock band the Beach Boys from their 1969 album 20/20 and their unfinished Smile project.

The instrumentation includes banjo, cello, dobro, bouzouki, fuzz bass, trumpet, accordion, and percussion that was arranged to sound like the pounding of rail spikes.

Parks subsequently disassociated himself from the project, leaving "Cabinessence" unfinished until November 1968, when Wilson's bandmates overdubbed additional vocals onto the recording.

[not verified in body] In 2012, the magazine ranked it the 11th-greatest Beach Boys song, deeming it "Smile in microcosm" and a "misunderstood masterpiece".

Biographer Jon Stebbins said that its "demonic chanting" exemplified "some of the most haunting, manic, evil-sounding music the Beach Boys ever made".

"Cabinessence" (originally conceived as "Cabin Essence") was written by Brian Wilson and guest lyricist Van Dyke Parks for the Beach Boys' (never-finished) album Smile.

[1] Parks told biographer Steven Gaines that he and Wilson had been "trying to write a song that would end on a freeze frame of the Union Pacific Railroad—the guys come together and have their picture taken.

"[4] On "Who Ran the Iron Horse", "[Brian] had a very definite visual image in mind of a train in motion, and suddenly he stopped in the middle of the song with the 'Grand Coolie' refrain.

Granges were collectives of farms that would pool their resources so they could set their own prices, so that they weren't competing so much with each other, but so they were finding a reasonable return for their endeavors.

"[8] Journalist Domenic Priore felt that the song "sums up the Western portions of Smile by crossing continents in music".

[7] Artist Frank Holmes, who designed the Smile cover artwork, created an illustration that was inspired by the song's lyrics: "Lost and found you still remain there".

[12] The track begins with a 40-second section called "Home on the Range", with the accompaniment involving piano, banjo, bass, flute, harmonica, and backing vocals singing an ascending "doing" melody.

[13] Musician Mark Johnson referred to the banjo as "traditionally the Great American folk instrument" and likened its use in the song to "part of the soundtrack to a lost Twilight Zone episode".

[13] Biographer Jon Stebbins said that the "demonic chanting" exemplified "some of the most haunting, manic, evil-sounding music the Beach Boys ever made".

repeat once and are then followed by "Grand Coolee Dam", which involves the chant "over and over the crow cries uncover the cornfield / over and over the thresher and hovers the wheatfield".

Smile!, the Wondermints' Darian Sahanaja scrawled a cartoon bubble phrase above a photo of Carl Wilson that joked of the song, "‘So!

[13] Instrumental tracking for the "Home on the Range" section was recorded on October 3, 1966 at Gold Star Studios with engineer Larry Levine.

On December 6,[13] further vocal overdubs were tracked at Columbia for "Cabinessence", a session that included the recording of Mike Love's singing on "The Grand Coulee Dam".

[23] Love did not understand the lyrics "over and over the crow cries uncover the cornfield" and thought that the song may have contained references to drug culture, something that he did not wish to be associated with.

[27] When Parks was interviewed for the 1976 television special The Beach Boys: It's OK!, he characterized the song as part of an "American Gothic"-style piece and remembered, "I said [to Mike], 'I don't know what these lyrics are about.

I think the music created the problem for Mike, and it was perfectly understandable that he was terribly jealous of me, as it became evident that he wanted my job [as Brian's lyricist].

[26] On November 20, 1968, "Cabinessence" was given additional vocal overdubs by Carl and Dennis Wilson at Capitol Studios for the group's forthcoming album 20/20.

[37] Biographer David Leaf wrote that there were reportedly "twenty-five different mixes and combinations" of "Cabinessence" that had been pressed on acetate discs before the group settled on the version they released.

[33] According to ethnomusicologist David Toop, when 20/20 was released, the inclusion of "Cabinessence" was "the biggest thrill" for "true fans" of Beach Boys, even though "it didn't make a lot of sense" as the album's closing track.

"[42] Retrospectively, academic John Covach wrote that although the song "seems lyrically disorganized and more episodic than even the alternate version of 'Heroes and Villains' ... it does have that aura of manic brilliance that characterized Brian's work before the collapse of Smile".

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.

As Parks recalled in a 1995 interview, "For the first time in 30 years, he was able to ask me directly, once again, 'What do those lyrics -- Over and over the crow flies, uncover the cornfield -- mean?'

[29] Writing his 2006 biography of Wilson, Peter Ames Carlin wrote that the "Cabinessence" lyric dispute between Love and Parks "has long become a central piece of the Smile legend, both because it marked a turning point in the album’s progress and because it resonates with so much psychological and cultural subtext.

"[26] In a 2012 interview, Parks stated that, when people asked him for his thoughts on the release of The Smile Sessions, "I tell them with how happy I am to see the lads finally eat that crow over the cornfield.