The longest number on the album, the song is a 13-minute reflection on life, love, and amoebas, whose complex structure incorporates a Bahamian spiritual ("I Bid You Goodnight", originally recorded by the Pinder Family[1][2]).
Heron next sings a passage beginning "Who would lose and who would bruise", whose tune is to be reprised later on in the piece.
The numerous parts of the song are woven together by Heron's harpsichord sections and Williamson's instrumental passages on the gimbri and Jew's harp.
He wrote:[5]"Weaving between styles as divergent as Bahamian funerary music, East Indian incantation and ancient Celtic mysticism, 'A Very Cellular Song' represents a high point in the band's creativity and surely influenced a host of others including Led Zeppelin, the Who and Lou Reed.
However, it holds together and in the end conveys a powerful range of human emotion through pain and joy and back again."