DAN HASELTINE: “I was watching a show on the Sundance channel called Iconoclasts, where comedian Dave Chapelle was asking poet Maya Angelou about growing up in the civil rights movement — and what it meant to her to have experienced the marginalization of who she was based on her color. Chapelle asked Angelou if it had made her angry. And Angelou said, “Absolutely.” But when it comes to anger, she said, you need to write it, and speak it, and dance it, and sing it, and paint it, and sculpt it. Because if you don’t, she warned, it becomes bitterness — a cancer that eats away at your heart and soul and passion. So that’s where ‘Weapons’ came from. It sounds like an anti-war song — and maybe it is — but not in the traditional context.” CHARLIE LOWELL: “I love starting a record off with ‘There are no enemies in front of you.’ It’s sort of us saying — to ourselves and to the listener — “Let down your guard. Bring everything you have to this record and see where it takes you. See what happens.”
