Five surprises from The Format show at the End this past Sunday:
#1. The End was more packed than I've ever seen it. I mean, PACKED. Granted I haven't been to too, too many shows at the End, but it was wall-to-wall, shoulder-to-shoulder, people-standing-in-front-of-the-bathroom packed. The venue's pretty small, but this is a band that hasn't released a proper album since 2003, a band that just parted ways with its label. Impressive.
#2. The bar was closed. This shouldn't have surprised me, it was an all-ages show. It was only the responsible thing to do. Still, with the combination of this and the claustrophobia mentioned above, I was forced to miss both the openers because I was in the bar across the street.
#3. Nate Ruess looks like that. Not "like that" in a bad way or anything, it's just always surprising when you see a singer for the first time... especially when you've been listening to his album for a few years. For some reason I didn't expect Ruess to look so young. Or to have such a shaggy haircut, for some reason. Even after the show, listening to their CD while remembering what he looked like, I have some kind of mental disconnect and it doesn't really make sense to me.
#4. It's been an absurdly long time since I've been to a show where the audience sang along. I mean, noticeably singing, where the audience knows all the words, and the singer lets the crowd take a line or two. Coldplay last year doesn't count - everyone knows who Coldplay is, and everyone has heard their singles on every radio station ever. The Format, well they're not so well-known. And here again I was unbelievably impressed - this was a fairly small venue, but a venue absolutely packed to the corners with fans who have clearly listened to Interventions and Lullabies on repeat until someone probably told them to turn it off. You don't see that kind of devotion in the standard hipster scene around town - either you don't know the band well enough to know the words, you don't really care, or you know all the words by heart but you're standing there in your perfectly careless looking outfit that took far too long to pick out, pretending that you don't care because it looks cool. For a moment I was semi-annoyed by the high school girl standing next to me, singing loudly enough in the quiet moments to distract me from the songs. Then I remembered that she and everyone else in the room were doing possibly the best thing they could to show their love and appreciation for the band. Just letting them know they know the words.
#5. The Format is the kind of band that plays obscure Sparks covers. It was definitely the highlight of the show. I took a really crappy video, but it only captures his falsetto, not the insane facial expressions that accompanied it. Oh wait, Sparks isn't that obscure?
All in all it was a good show, featuring a lot of older material, as well as a "rock block" of stuff from the album the band just finished, Dog Problems, which will hopefully be released around July 4. The new songs sounded great, and the older songs sounded excellent beefed up a bit for the live setting. I was a little sad they didn't play "Let's Make This Moment a Crime" or the fantastically titled "Janet." Fortunately I'll share both with you:
"Let's Make This Moment a Crime"
"Janet"
And one more for good measure - a song I took great pleasure in singing along to at the show:
"Career Day"
While you're waiting for Dog Problems, please buy the excellent, excellent Interventions and Lullabies and the more recent Snails EP (which features that fantastically titled track I mentioned before). Also check out their upcoming tour dates, where you too could hear crazy '70s covers.
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