Best known for era-defining ’90s hits including ‘Parklife’, ‘Girls & Boys’ and ‘Country House’, Blur escaped the Britpop ghetto to become sophisticated indie rockers while maintaining their large, devoted fanbase. With blur: To The End, director Toby L offers an intimate, revealing portrait of the quartet now.
In early 2023, frontman Damon Albarn invites his bandmates to a Devon recording studio to make The Ballad Of Darren, their first album in eight years. He almost crashes his car — a morbidly funny scene given Albarn had just been ruminating on death. This sets the tone, with more laugh-out-loud moments of gallows humour to follow. Before a Colchester Arts Centre gig undertaken as a warm-up for two huge Wembley Stadium shows, Albarn and self-deprecating guitarist Graham Coxon return to The Stanway School, which they attended as children and now has a classroom named for them. The headmaster is dumbstruck when Albarn profanely explains why he was beaten up daily and at his suggestion the room is furnished with a bowl of weed for budding musicians.
Small, serious moments give the piece real texture. It’s a shame there aren’t more.
It’s not all pedagogue embarrassment, though. Albarn weeps during album playback and sometimes cuts a melancholic figure, possibly due to a long-term relationship dissolving before recording. Elsewhere, the band pointedly reflect on the disaster of Brexit. These small, serious moments give the piece real texture. It’s a shame there aren’t more. Bassist Alex James still clearly still loves to party, while sensible, sober drummer Dave Rowntree suffers a bad knee injury that jeopardises but doesn’t thwart the triumphant Wembley gigs. They’re all looking exhausted, but that’s rock ’n’ roll.
An uplifting finale comprises snippets of Wembley’s triumphant nights — including a riotous ‘Song 2’ and ‘The Universal’, as profoundly beautiful as ever — where the band are at their most happy and energised (a full concert doc will follow this release). Evidently, it’s worth making it To The End.