Ipso Facto – a bunch of Essex girls hiding behind severe haircuts or a bunch of severe haircuts hiding behind Essex Girls?
Actually, they’re not really from the ‘Southend scene’, because that’s not cool anymore. They’re from somewhere else now. Nether Wallop or Chipping Sodbury. Or Peckham. Wherever… And they don't only play London because only Londoners would buy into their sham of an existence, they play London because only London wants to book them. Which is a completely different thing.
This not-all-that-revealing documentary explains all; you know, there’s much more to Ipso Facto than haircuts – there’s hair dye, eyeliner, nice dresses, a complete lack of musical ambiton, the ability rip off Siouxsie Sioux while wearing severe haircuts, and a beardy producer who says they are very ‘dark’.
They can barely play their instruments, but by the time they’ve had their 8th front cover on an indie-centric fashion-conscious music rag or pea-brained, myopic, glorified blog site, or played their 8th headlining slot in a retro clothes shop off Brick Lane, there’s no doubt that Ipso Facto will be getting rave reviews across the board for whatever mind-numbingly average collection of so-called songs they can cobble together in-between twice-hourly haircuts.
Ipso Facto is latin for ‘By that very fact itself,’ but by what fact are Ipso Facto, in fact, a fact? The fact of history repeating itself being inevitable? By the fact of ripping off Siouxsie Sioux being modish? By the fact of having photogentically severe haircuts? What is the point in Ipso Facto?
I am no closer to answering this most pertinent of questions after watching this documentary. Ipso Facto are the mini-Pringles of the music world: ridiculously excessive packaging, disappointing texture, excessive and slightly-off-the-mark taste, slightly nauseating but easily consumable, basically a re-branded crappier version of an existing crappy product, and quite likely to end up being thrown around at picnics.
(Well, that last comparison might be a metaphor-extension too far. But it’s an enduring image…)
Perhaps the very worst thing about Ipso Facto is the fact that The Horrors already happened, and that we haven’t yet been able to forget their gurning 17-year-old faces hogging the cover of NME before they’d even decided to pick up guitars and rip off the world’s most average garage rock acts; they were haircuts, which suggested a band. Now we have Ipso Facto, who are FEMALE haircuts, which suggest a band. You go girls! Way to make me feel empowered!
There’s an album planned for next spring and the girls are already planning a holiday to South By Southwest to promote it.
Let’s hope they don’t get squashed by any large barrels of bourbon. Or mauled by possessed scarecrows. Or reversed over by combine harvesters...
That would be awful.
