Better Living Through Thinking

But Metheny says the extended form the album took was also intended as a political statement to the culture at This record in a lot of ways is a protest record. "Lyle and I both feel completely out of step with the direction that the larger culture is moving in: a culture that's about reducing things, placing less demands on listeners, and making things shorter. It went from a five-minute tune to a three-minute tune, to now you just have to have a ring tone. We reject that. That's not an effective way of getting to a deeper point of understanding and the good things that we have found through our research in music that lead us to conclusions that are in fact enlightened or enhanced views of wisdom."

"They don't come through reduction, they come through nuance and detail and expansion and development. And there's several hundred years of musical wisdom and truth that also support that. The general tendency of the culture to go for the most common denominator is something that with this record we're fighting against."