The woman whose photo makes up the cover of Vampire Weekend’s album Contra is suing the band. Kirsten Kennis wants $2 million from the band and the photographer, claiming that a forged signature was used on the release form authorising the photo’s use.
Now, the band’s label, XL, has issued a response to the lawsuit. And frontman Ezra Koenig has talked to NME about the situation.
Here’s the statement: “As is standard practice, Vampire Weekend and XL Recordings licensed the rights to use the photo on the cover of Contra pursuant to a license agreement that contains representations and warranties authorising this use of the photo. Now that a lawsuit has been filed, we look forward to having the matter resolved in Court. We will be filing our response after we have had an opportunity to review the allegations. Consistent with our practice, we will not be commenting further about the pending litigation at this time.”
Chatting with NME, Koenig said, “I think I can speak for all of us and say this is the first time any of us have ever been sued, so we’re still learning how it works. There’s so many things we could say about it but given we have no experience of it we’re just keeping conversations to a journal for now, which is a little frustrating. There’s nothing we can say about it. We’re not trying to be mysterious. I imagine in the next few months there’ll be plenty to talk about. Given it’s our first time we just want to do it properly.”
