The Vampire Weekend cover has been driving me crazy. The town I grew up in was more Izod than Polo but fuck if this doesn’t take me back to being in middle school and knowing exactly who the queen bee was and why. With all due respect she looks like the lifeguard that everyone at the country club lied they shagged in back of their jaguar or on the golf course at night. I was the bus boy at the country club so I’m not bragging, just recounting 1983 to me.
I had to dig up some details. I suddenly wish i hadn’t.
Pitchfork: The Contra album cover is really striking— what’s the story behind it?
Ezra Koenig: The picture is an actual candid document of a person in New York City in 1983— those are the clothes that she was wearing and how she did her hair that day. We didn’t hire one of our friends to throw on a vintage Polo shirt or anything.
Pitchfork: Her expression is intriguingly blank— it almost looks like she’s frightened by something behind the camera. What was your initial take on her overall vibe when you saw it?
EK: The first expression that I read into her was some sort of hesitation. We had a lot of discussions trying to figure out how old this person was when the picture was taken— she could be 15 or 27. The ambiguity of her age and expression made me feel like she was on the cusp of something, which really matches the vibe of the new album. Because you see people in their 50s with a family and children, and they can have a look of self-assuredness. But people between 13 and 30— the age range seems to grow every year— don’t have that sort of stability. Sometimes it comes across in the way that you carry yourself. Wrapped up in her expression is this question: “How is she feeling?” Maybe she wasn’t even really sure at the time.
Pitchfork: Who is she?
EK: I don’t want to give away all the details about the photo just yet, but I learned that she’s now living in Malibu.
Pitchfork: Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig Talks New Album, Confronts the Haters
