Blur: New World Towers

With this documentary, Sam Wrench picks up the story of the re-formed, reinvigorated Blur in the aftermath of 2009's excellent career retrospective, No Distance Left to Run. The focus falls on the recording of the on/off group's 2015 album, The Magic Whip, a project born out of five days in the studio to fill an unplanned hiatus in their world tour while in Hong Kong. The sessions were shelved as incomplete, only for guitarist Graham Coxon to take the initiative to hone the works-in-progress into a finished release. Rough, grainy footage of those initial jams is interspersed with hazy Hong Kong vistas and slickly shot stage shows, as the band talk frankly about life inside and out of Blur, and coming to terms with their "heritage act" status. Damon Albarn is reflective, Alex James waggishly amusing and Dave Rowntree just happy to be along for the ride, but Coxon is the most unguarded and revealing (his spontaneous Liam Gallagher singalong is priceless). The scenes of Blur playing their old hits to a sold-out Hyde Park crowd seem like unnecessary padding, but otherwise this is a warm and intimate snapshot of a band who finally seem to be pleasing themselves as well as their fans.