Posted: by The Alt Editing Staff
In contrast to the breezier first songs on their classic prior albums, the first song on The Format’s comeback album Boycott Heaven, “No Gold at the Top,” begins with some raw guitar strums and singer Nate Ruess reflecting on the dire state of the world today, more reminiscent of grunge than the sunshiny indie pop of Dog Problems. Soon the song shifts out of demo mode and into a comparatively more polished sound, and as Ruess raises his once-famous voice a few more octaves on the line, “There’s no gold at the top / Just vultures waiting for you to die,” the song explodes into full-on grunge-influenced rock. This may seem atypical of a Format album to the band’s diehard fans, or even to Nate Ruess’ later fans gathered with his more famous band fun. But this is exactly what I wanted from the band.
The Format originated in Peoria, Arizona, as the core duo of longtime friends Ruess (vocals) and Sam Means (guitars, keyboards, piano, multiple instruments). They came from the emo/pop-punk scene with their teenage bands Nevergonnascore and This Past Year, but they wanted to do something a lot more pop-oriented with The Format. They operated on very simple terms; they called themselves The Format to make fun of a record label’s interest in a format for a single, they named their debut EP just EP, and the first song on EP was named “The First Single.” Ironically enough, that one song was enough to generate a lot of buzz in the Arizona music scene and bigwigs at major labels, so they signed to Elektra for Interventions + Lullabies in 2003. It featured a re-recorded version of “The First Single,” now retitled “The First Single (You Know Me),” and then the band really blew up. “The First Single (You Know Me)” remains their most accessible song to date, exuding the kind of catchiness that would appeal both to pop radio and emo kids. The rest of the album is radio-friendly too, even with the weird song structures that make up a lot of it, but when Elektra folded into Atlantic Records, they didn’t consider them to be a priority anymore and dropped them.
That brings us to the band’s masterpiece and one of my all-time favorite albums: Dog Problems. Released in 2006 on their own label The Vanity Label, it found The Format branching out even further and making a fantastic, diverse, truly rewarding pop album. It explores the concept of a break-up with many wonderfully memorable lines, and it also at least partially discusses their record label woes on “The Compromise.” It runs the gamut from dance-rock (“Time Bomb”), baroque pop (the title track), power pop (“Oceans”), alt-country (“Snails”), and on their best song “If Work Permits” folk pop transitions into emo. To this day it’s timeless, and I would even go as far as to say that it’s arguably the greatest break-up album of all time.
Ultimately though, The Format announced a hiatus in 2008. Ruess went on to form fun. They released Aim and Ignite in 2009, a great album that continued the theatrical approach of Dog Problems and even featured some songs co-written by Means. They got really into hip-hop, achieving mainstream success with Some Nights. If you were a kid like me during this time, you knew that fun. were inescapable. They scored three massive hits with “We Are Young,” “Some Nights,” and “Carry On,” and those songs and their music videos were literally everywhere on radio and TV. Ruess got his biggest success, though, when he did a duet with Pink on her juggernaut hit “Just Give Me a Reason.” Both he and Means issued their solo albums, Grand Romantic and 10 Songs, in 2015 and 2016 respectively. The latter year is when I found The Format.
2016: Nate Ruess is famous and known all across the country as the singer of fun. But when I discovered The Format, as someone who was starting to get really into ’90s and 2000s emo, I was absolutely amazed that he was at one point part of the emo scene and that this band toured with such legends as Rainer Maria and Piebald. But The Format was so much more than merely emo; they were a genuine indie rock band that took a lot from forward-thinking pop music. I liked Ruess with fun., but with The Format I truly got it. This was where I knew he had an incredible voice. I became an instant ride-or-die fan of the band clamoring for their reunion. Even as he still performed certain favorites from the band live on his own, it wasn’t as satisfying as a full-on Format reunion. But a few years later, the unthinkable happened.
The Format finally reunited in 2020 to perform a surprise acoustic set at Means’s Hello Merch store in Arizona, and they then announced select shows in three cities: Phoenix, New York City, and Chicago. Of course, plans fell through due to COVID, and the band went about rescheduling the shows constantly until cancelling the reunion in 2022. I was devastated. But then, Ruess picked up the guitar, something he’d never done before, and he called up Means to work on some demos with him. Means thought it was for solo demos, but to his surprise, it was actually for The Format’s first album in twenty years. They then hit the studio in January 2025 with producer Brendan O’Brien (Stone Temple Pilots, Rage Against the Machine) who also played bass and drummer Matt Chamberlain (Pearl Jam, Fiona Apple). And thus, Boycott Heaven was born.
The duo actually met at a Weezer concert on their Pinkerton tour, and if Interventions + Lullabies was their Blue Album, Boycott Heaven is their Pinkerton. Both albums share a kinship in having a weird, raw emo-inflicted sound and very personal and detailed lyrics, best exemplified on the very Pinkerton-esque “No You Don’t,” where Ruess sings about a lover who hasn’t been faithful to him with the same anguish as Rivers Cuomo. He also pushes himself vocally on the album, as he screams quite a bit on “No Gold at the Top,” “Human Nature,” and especially “Depressed.” The songs that call back to The Format’s earlier sound the most are the folksy “Shot in the Dark” and “Right Where I Belong,” which recall Interventions + Lullabies, and closer “Back to Life,” a piano ballad that could have fit on Dog Problems. But otherwise, this is a no-frills rock album that find The Format channeling the bands of their youth.
To a lot of Format fans, this may seem uncharacteristic of a band that strayed away from a typical rock or emo sound, but Boycott Heaven is the album the band was always destined to make. “If Work Permits,” the closer on Dog Problems, ends with Ruess screaming cathartically against a fuzzy backdrop. It was always something I wished the band did more, and Boycott Heaven picks up right where the band left off and delivers a lot of heavy moments like that. Boycott Heaven may be their most genuinely emo album yet, and it’s awesome to hear Ruess embrace this side of himself more, especially after his time as a real-deal pop singer with fun.
It’s not all about relationships though. Just like on the band’s classics, phrases and lyrical references reoccur throughout, and the lyrics touch a great deal on the hypocrisy of religion. The phrase “Holy Roller” pops up in both “No Gold at the Top” and the ’90s alt-rock inspired “Boycott Heaven,” the former cleverly having an outro reminiscent of a guitar part that shows up in “Holy Roller” and the latter dealing with embracing a better afterlife (“Lost my motivation / Wasn’t much for chasing the cross”). Ruess uses a wise standpoint about growing old with his wife on “Right Where I Belong”: “If I’m ever getting old, then I’m getting old with you too,” a more mature perspective from the guy who once wrote “We Are Young.” But, perhaps most impressively, The Format use their platform to rail against the genocide in Palestine on “Human Nature” and “Leave It Alone (Till the Morning).” On the latter, over a makeshift drum machine beat, Ruess chillingly sings “All the kids in Gaza / Are trying to go home / The problem is they got nowhere to go,” and the rest of the song deals with the shame of being the citizen of a country that’s actively aiding in such monstrous acts while trying to distract us with staples of pop culture. It’s remarkable to hear Ruess sing about this in such an effective and resonant way.
Boycott Heaven is an immaculate return for The Format. I’m so glad Ruess decided to pick up that guitar, because they made the album that was really the most logical progression from where they were at twenty years ago. They sound just as awesome as a four-piece rock band as when they were a string-laden power pop ensemble, and completely rejuvenated and refreshed on top of that. Nate Ruess and Sam Means are still the Lennon-McCartney of this scene; Means still has a fantastic approach with pop melodies that isn’t afraid to get a little weird. Boycott Heaven being the band’s most topical album lyrically, Ruess still has an amazing way with words that just stick with you, and his voice is somehow as youthful as it was in 2003. This should be up there with Inlet by Hum and For Forever by The American Analog Set as one of the greatest comeback albums from a classic band this decade; The Format have made an excellent album that’s just as essential as their classics and marks an exciting new chapter in their career. Having waited a decade for The Format to come back, it warms my heart that this album is as amazing as it is. “Been gone for way too long / Got lost inside the stone / I never meant to say goodbye,” Ruess sings on closer “Back to Life,” and I hope he never has to say goodbye again. The world needs The Format.
Disappointing / Average / Good / Great / Phenomenal
Boycott Heaven is out now.
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Matthew D’Iorio | @loveisworry14
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