Shot In The Dark I had almost made peace with the fact that The Format would likely never make music again. The statement put out by the band on February 4, 2008 hit like a gut-punch from one of my favorite indie bands of all time, and now, almost 18 years to the exact day of the indefinite hiatus, The Format have returned. The roadmap that led to The Format making new music featured a few detours. fun. had formed shortly after the announced hiatus and would make a household name of vocalist Nate Ruess, and earn him his first Grammy Award for Song of the Year for the unstoppable “We Are Young.” The Format’s other half, Sam Means, would release a solo album called 10 Songs (which is definitely worth a listen if you never checked it out), while he watched his bandmate blossom in fun., and Nate’s own solo album entitled Grand Romantic. Much like the Interventions + Lullabies song of “On Your Porch,” Sam Means and Nate Ruess have always been drawn to making music together. The lyrics of, “So, now here I sit in a hotel off of Sunset / My thoughts bounce off of Sam’s guitar / And that’s the way it’s been / Ever since we were kids, but now / Now we’ve got something to prove,” feel a bit more emphatic now that The Format have reunited and released their third studio album of Boycott Heaven. Nate mentioned that he started to teach himself guitar during the pandemic, which seemed to unlock a key ingredient in the catalyst that brought him back to Sam. Shortly after the band had planned to reunite for a few returning shows, they re-discovered their love of creating art together, and I’m so happy The Format are back in full swing now.
You can feel a bit of each project from Sam and Nate in this “version” of The Format on Boycott Heaven. It’s got the sing-a-long moments that made The Format an endearing and well-loved band in the first place, it has the bombastic anthems of fun., and has some sprinklings of each member’s solo work in there too. The result is a riff-heavy record that feels like The Format on steroids. Nate’s contributions on guitar add a different vibe to the style the band went for here, but at its core, it’s still Nate and Sam rekindling their love for crafting pop tunes that will be stuck in your head for years to come.
The slow-building opener of “No Gold At The Top” begins with some clean guitars while Nate sings, “Two days is dangerous / Two days beside your soul / One night is just enough / One night to lose control,” that finds the vocalist once again revisiting the topic of nighttime to find the spark that ignites the flame in The Format. As the song reaches its crescendo, the riffs come in heavy and showcase a beefed-up new sound from the band. The outro of the opening track ends with the opening guitar chords to lead single “Holy Roller” that seems to feel right at home in the album sequencing here. The emphatic chorus of, “Holy Roller / Don’t go wasting all your time / Praying for a sign / I’m burning out faster than a candle in the night / I’ll be gone before sunrise,” almost feels like a mantra for The Format to waste not a second more in getting back to the task at hand.
I absolutely love the emotive vocals from Nate on the shimmering single “Shot In The Dark”, and he sounds as sure-footed and confident as he’s ever been in his career. While Interventions + Lullabies studio version’s vocals seemed a bit restrained, seeing The Format live several times brought a different feeling to the vocals behind those warm songs that should’ve been much bigger than they ended up being due to “label limbo” with Atlantic Records, the vocals on Boycott Heaven are front and center and match the big personality of the frontman. “Shot In The Dark” ended up being my favorite track from the early singles released from the set, and it quickly cements itself as a top tier The Format song in a bulletproof discography. The personal storytelling on this track is key to evoking the right emotions, and as Nate sings, “Me and my friends / We used to fall apart / And piece ourselves back together like a work of art / Mom was a mess / She took it way too hard / I left it tucked in the drawer like a birthday card,” it’s clear that he’s diving into his past to help cope with his present state of mind.
”Forever” is another one of those The Format songs that sticks with you right from the first listen and you look forward to whenever it comes back around on hitting play on Boycott Heaven. It features a fairly repetitive guitar riff, but it provides a great musical landscape for Nate to shimmer in his overall vocal performance. “Depressed” also has a ton of standout moments in it and revisits elements of Aim and Ignite and Dog Problems while still covering new ground. The song plays out in an unpredictable fashion as it even has an elevator music type of bridge where Nate sings, “Every handshake’s worth a play / ‘If you want you can just walk away / All you gotta do is pay'”. It never comes across as clumsy, instead it showcases the risks the duo of Nate and Sam are still willing to take at this stage of their career.
”No You Don’t” deals with the emotions and demons of doubting someone’s love for you, and it plays out like a indie rock power ballad of sorts. The chorus of, “Who are you to say you love me, baby? / Even though you know you don’t / And who are you to laugh behind my back / Then tell me nothing’s wrong? / Who are you to walk away / To be alone? / And who are you to say you love me? / Even though you don’t,” is peak indie pop band territory, and highlights the magic between these two musicians who are artists in every sense of the word.
When the band takes a moment to reflect on ballads like “Right Where I Belong” it brought back all of the same warm feelings I had when I first discovered the band opening up for Jimmy Eat World. What I didn’t know at that time is how big of an impact The Format would have in shaping my music taste. The closing lyrics of, “Julia, when you move / New York break lights shine your shoes / And we don’t say much / ‘Cuz what’s left to prove?” bring it back to the theme of “On Your Porch” where the band felt like they had something to prove in their burning desire to be noticed. It’s a really cool callback to that era of The Format.
”Human Nature” is one of the most unique songs on Boycott Heaven and it begins with an old school, type of jangly beat, before the guitars in the second verse bring the track back into the realm of where they were going with their music on this record. I found the verse of “I watched the sages go dry / As soon as you bought marigolds / But all of the flowers are wild / On my side of the road / A song that I didn’t write / Dies on the radio / None of the credit is mine / Feels nice to be left alone,” to be pretty powerful and impactful as Nate reflects on the power of music in general. “Leave It Alone (Till The Morning)” is a fuzzy guitar mid-tempo rocker that adds in the political commentary in the chorus of, “All the kids in Gaza are dying to go home / The problem is they got nowhere to go / And I am not your father in that I know my right from wrong / It’s probably best we just leave it alone till the morning.” It’s new territory for The Format to cover, but it brings the material back to a human element and allows for the band to bring context, and possibly meaning, to the world we all share.
The title track plays out like an ode to The Pixies’ classic “Where Is My Mind” with its similar-sounding, eerie guitar riff that helps with the vibe being put forth on the single. When the song really kicks in with, “It’s a long line / And it bleeds into the pavement / Sixty something words to save them from this recent misery / So eyes wide / Or you will never see the truth / The many ways in which it’s bruised / All of the people you knew,” its clear that the evolution of The Format is nearly complete as the two musicians are fully in sync with each other’s strengths. The album closer of “Back To Life” is a piano-laced ballad that finds Nate admitting that he’s “only here to steal your love tonight.” When the tunes are as heartfelt and as honest as they’ve ever been here, it’s really hard to not marvel in what The Format have accomplished on Boycott Heaven. The band have crafted a record that not only lives up to the legacy they created, but also makes a career-defining statement of realization that they came back at just the right time and for the right reasons. For that, I’ll be forever grateful for The Format reuniting and blessing us with Boycott Heaven.