David Lang's impetus for this piece was to be the opposite of a big-brained, I-am-so-smart composer. Instead, Lang wanted to focus more on appalling and snide aspects of life. Lang tries to get every bang for his buck out of the musical material that he has in Cheating, Lying, Stealing. His composition is like a ten-minute-long machine that follows a set of laws that he invented, at which point music seems to have simply written itself. He tweaks one aspect of the conventions and cheats his way into having even more material. Scored for bass clarinet, cello, piano, and two percussionists (who play junk metals on opposite ends of the stage), this piece is angular, edgy, and repetitious. The main musical gesture is six high and low hits from the ensemble. This motion repeats time after time—eventually with a soaring cello solo over top of it. The interest of the work is in how the gesture changes with each repeat. A second section, which is quite different in nature, abruptly interrupts this. The timbral palette of the second section is glimmering with high piano notes and triangle chimes and is silky in its essence as opposed to the previous section that is comprised of raw-boned strikes and thuds. The manner in which the second section transforms itself back into the first section for the recapitulation is one of the most brilliant aspects of this piece. Cheating, Lying, Stealing was composed for the Bang on a Can All-Stars.

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