Getting on: "To the End"

The previous Blur documentary, 2010's No Distance Left to Run, was a surprisingly emotive record of the reunion necessary after the Albarn-Coxon tiff threatened to draw a line under the band's discography for good. The group had outlasted their erstwhile Britpop rivals Oasis, but now what? Fortunately for all parties, the success of the reunion gigs assured both a happy ending and Blur's status as an ongoing musical proposition. To the End picks up with the band in the course of last year's unofficial "Summer of Blur", a sunny, fruitful period in which the fourpiece chased the release of the critically acclaimed and chart-topping album "The Ballad of Darren" with the biggest gigs of their entire three-decade career at Wembley Stadium. We'll be getting what appears a traditional concert movie, Blur at Wembley Stadium, in September; this teaser, directed by mysteriously monickered friend-of-the-band Toby L, effectively serves as Blur: The Road to Wembley. It reintroduces four very different personalities - singer Damon Albarn and bassist Alex James extroverted, even clownish; guitarist Graham Coxon and drummer Dave Rowntree more introverted, shuffling, sober - then watches on as they hole up, first at Albarn's grand coastal retreat, then in a studio in North London, to thrash out a set list worthy of the occasion. 

An element of jeopardy is introduced, in that everyone's getting old; in purely Blur terms, the quartet are now closer in age to the much-mocked Tracy Jacks than they are to Dan Abnormal. For starters, Damon has a divorce and a dodgy knee to show for himself heading into middle age, and his thick specs lend him a passing resemblance to Shooting Stars scorekeeper Angelos Epithemiou. Alex can't metabolise the Jägerbombs as he once did, yet wearily admits to his director-confessor "there's always a really good reason not to go to bed". Dave duly puts his knee out in the most nouveau riche manner imaginable. Crucially, they all have other things going on - be that kids, cheesemaking or local politics - in a way they didn't when they were Lads About Camden in the early 1990s. (Clips from the VHS tour video Starshaped serve as flashbacks: look at the little cherubs.) As Damon flags early on, aging brings its own challenges for the musician, chief among them creating something new, rather than settling for being "a bunch of old cunts reliving the past". Yet the narrative stakes here remain moderate to low. The album is in the bag, and a certified success; the creative differences that were a source of contention last time out have been resolved, such that Alex can blithely chuckle about Damon's workaholic tendencies ("If you don't keep him focused on the job in hand, he'll literally write another opera"). Furthermore, as seasoned, intelligent, emotionally literate souls, they're better placed to talk us through the band's creative and interpersonal processes than, say, the Gallaghers proved in 2016's Oasis film Supersonic. The result is not unenjoyable, but also a distinctly cosy music doc. Everyone gets distracted by a gorgeous-looking Victoria sponge, the way they might once have done by drink, drugs or groupies. Damon and Graham revisit their old school, and unsettle its new headmaster by calling for a big bowl of pot to be placed in the middle of the music room that bears their name. The pre-Wembley warm-up gigs are booked in former haunts and small seaside towns. Age is really no more than an abstract, background noise sporadically raised in the mix via bleary-headed testimony; there's none of the painfully angular grief Nick Cave had to address in 2022's This Much I Know To Be True. To the End thus presents as a consolidation of last year's triumphs, and it features as much hugging as any other business - though it's still stirring to witness these former art students embrace one another and a creative second wind, and to see them embraced by the crowd in return.

To the End is now playing in selected cinemas; Blur: Live at Wembley Stadium opens September 6.