When the Format‘s Nate Ruess and Sam Means took to the stage at Ohana Festival in Dana Point, California, over the weekend, they brought the thrill of nostalgia and something else, too. Alongside ‘00s hits like “Dog Problems” and “The Compromise,” the duo performed new tracks that confronted the social and political landscape of today.
Earlier this year, the band released their first album in 20 years, Boycott Heaven, a stark contrast to their past work. Their audience and the world around them had changed in those two decades since the Format released their LP Dog Problems, a brilliant power-pop ride through heartbreak and dysfunction that is beloved by many millennials (and has found a new audience with Gen Z fans).
After the Format announced their hiatus in 2008, Means continued to make music and released his debut album, 10 Songs. He also launched Hello Merch with his wife, Anita, creating merchandise for fellow artists like Elvis Costello and Sleater-Kinney. Meanwhile, Ruess linked up with Jack Antonoff, then of New Jersey indie rock band Steel Train, and former Anathallo member Andrew Dost to start a new band. After fun. dropped the chart-topping, Grammy-winning song “We Are Young” in 2012, Ruess once again swerved. The singer rolled out his solo album, Grand Romantic, three years later, went on tour, and then took a step back from the music industry. While he’d dip back every now and then, songwriting for Keith Urban and Pink, Ruess focused on his growing family and also picked up the guitar.
So why did Ruess and Means split at the height of their fame? “A thing that is really important to us in this band is we don’t do things unless we really want to,” Means says. “It has to feel right, and maybe at that time it just wasn’t.”
Ruess adds, “I stopped making music and started paying attention to the world. When you have kids, you start to look less at yourself and start looking at things around you. All I can think about is just all the bad stuff happening now, and so I just started to write about it.”
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In 2020, Ruess and Means were ready to get back together for a run of reunion shows. “We came back at a time where we were both really kind of were itching to do it,” the singer adds. Those plans were swiftly nixed when Covid put the world on lockdown. Still, Means wanted to make a new album — but Ruess initially had no interest.
“We took a few years off, and sometime in that two years in between, I was like, ‘Huh, I’m starting to write music. It’s weird.’ So I called up Sam, and we got it back together,” says Ruess, before remarking, “And now we’re here, and it’s weird.”
In the new music they began making, Ruess aimed his pen at the current administration’s hostile immigration policies and tactics that have shaken communities in the U.S., as well as the humanitarian crisis in Gaza as Palestinians face severe food insecurity, mass displacement, and the breakdown of basic infrastructure as the death toll around them rises.
Ruess points to “Leave It Alone (Till the Morning),” from Boycott Heaven, which he says he wrote a week after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack and the launch of Israel’s war in Gaza. In the song’s chorus, Ruess sings, “All the kids in Gaza are dying to go home/The problem is they got nowhere to go,” while one verse asserts: “I’m not proud to be American no more.”
“Living an affluent life, you’re surrounded by a lot of people who aren’t as aware as they should be of how awful things are,” he says. “It’s hard to do a string of days that don’t go by where I don’t break down, so it felt like that was something that I needed to do, and I felt it was very important to put on the album.”
Means adds, “We have kids, and how can they look up to us if we’re not being authentic with ourselves and honest with ourselves? They are the hope.”
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Boycott Heaven erupts with “Holy Roller,” the kind of searing anthem the Format does so well, and packs another criticism of the war in Gaza into “Human Nature.” Ruess says that one of the songs that didn’t make the album, “The Bar is Set So Low,” took aim at the government’s appalling treatment of immigrants in America. All proceeds of the song, which the band posted on Bandcamp, go toward the Women’s Foundation of Minnesota’s Immigrant Rapid Response Fund, the Immigrant Defense Network, Advocates for Immigrant Rights, and Latino Memphis.
As the Format’s dedication toward activism evolved, the pair decided that they wanted to do more. “There comes a point that when things get so bad, you really have to start pushing forward and taking some kind of action,” Means says.
In January, the band launched the roaming Saturdays in the Park. The event sees the Format play a free show at a park and invite local organizations to set up booths and chat with their communities. “People are bringing their families and they’re treating it sort of like a picnic, [while also] getting informed by what’s happening and getting an opportunity to see things that normally are swept under the rug or hidden behind a curtain,” says Means, who hopes the movement inspires other artists to build a similar network. The Format’s next Saturdays in the Park stops are at Malcolm X Park in Washington, D.C, and Prospect Park in Brooklyn, where they’ll be joined by Phantom Planet in October.
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Looking forward, Ruess says that he is moved by other artists speaking out against the war in Gaza and credits Macklemore, who was dropped from Ed Sheeran’s stadium tour after voicing his support of Palestinians onstage. “Public opinion has changed, and it’s because of the Macklemores of the world that have made that,” he says.
When the Format take the stage at Ohana later that afternoon, the crowd belts out the lyrics to nostalgia-fueled tracks “Tie the Rope,” “The First Single,” and “If Work Permits.” Then, Ruess delivers “Leave It Alone,” and when he gets to the outro, he roars out the last line: “It’s probably best we just leave it alone till the morning.” His delivery is a stark contrast to the recording, which soars almost reluctantly, and his voice is as determined as ever.
