The Format - Boycott Heaven

The Format

Boycott Heaven

2026

The Vanity Label

After 20 years Nate Ruess got back together with Sam Means, with whom he should have stayed in the first place (although he would make the monies with fun.), and have graced us all with a new Format record.

And I love it. 

Harder and much crunchier than any Format or Fun record. And of course it is. Nate used to write songs by singing them and getting other musicians to flesh them out. So they were all melody and nuance and indifferent to conformity and structural rules.

But then he learned guitar. And that has resulted in Boycott Heaven's edge and anger.
But it's not without it's own nostalgia for those mid-aughts anxieties and forlornness. I find myself crying at times, but that's because I really really miss those days.
The days of The Format and Fun and Steel Train and The Heavenly States and The Cat Empire and The Fratellis...The age of Napster and Audiogalaxy. When the music was widely shared (to the detriment of pockebooks) but before it all felt so commodified.
But this record is angrier then Dog Problems in it's approach. Not in the emotions. But it the approach.
What is even stranger to me is that it's produced by Brendan O'Brien and not Stephen McDonald who did Dog Problems and Aim & Ignite and Steel Train but...when I listen to it, especially the song, "Depressed"...Nate Ruess and Sam Means seem to have made an excellent Redd Kross record.
Time is a flat circle.

Grade: A

ASide: Holy Roller, Shot in the Dark, Depressed, Human Nature

BlindSide: No You Don't, Right Where I Belong,