“I started smoking again when I was 32. Who fucking does that?” exclaims Frank Turner during another one of his post-hedonism inquests. A few more casually self-aggrandising Spinal Tap-isms would have been welcome in this dreary rockumentary orbiting the libertarian punk-folker in 2014-15 as he grapples with the rigours of touring and recording his sixth album, now on major label Polydor.
Unfortunately he and his bandmates mostly get along fine and the recording of said album passes off smoothly – leaving director Ben Morse with little to get his teeth into. Great play is made of Turner’s struggle to shed himself of past hellraising commitments, but in the absence of much documentary evidence, what remains is too much navel-gazing talking-headage. Only in the snippet about the singer being forced, now he’s an arena-sized outfit, to pull back from his unusually personal, social media-era rapport with his fans does the film make a case for Turner as someone engaged in something not dutifully cribbed from the rock’n’roll playbook. Otherwise, unless you’re already a fan, it’s difficult to care.
