Metric Win Best Alternative Album Juno Award, Praise Canada's Music Community

Metric's breakthrough record 'Fantasies' won Alternative Album of the Year at the 2010 Juno Awards Saturday night, their first win after three nominations. The Toronto dance-rock quartet is up for two more awards during Sunday night's televised ceremony, including Songwriter of the Year and Group of the Year.

"Awards are an interesting thing," singer Emily Haines said backstage. "It's great that everyone gets together but most musicians just want to do their thing and its kind of awkward to be put in a position of having to compete with your friends, it's not really the goal."

Indeed, Haines took the opportunity at the podium to congratulate her friend and Broken Social Scene colleague Charles Spearin, who won the best jazz Juno earlier in the evening for his 'Happiness Project' album. Metric co-founder and guitarist Jimmy Shaw also made mention in his acceptance that "there are so many amazing musicians in this room, and in my neighbourhood and across the country."

Backstage, Shaw elaborated on the uniqueness of Canada's cooperative music community.

"There's very little competitive spirit, even when we're all sitting in the same room actually there for winning and losing awards. And when we were making 'Fantasies,' every musician who lives in the west end of Toronto was coming in and out of our studio. We're all going out and checking out each other's bands all the time. Everyone's making very different music so there's not this fear that someone's going to steal someone else's sound. It's just really supportive and community-based and I've never really witnessed that anywhere else on earth."

This is saying something considering Metric's nomadic past, which saw Haines and Shaw roaming between Montreal, London, L.A. and New York before returning home to Toronto in the early 2000s (albeit along with a California-based rhythm section, drummer Joules Scott-Key and bassist Josh Winstead).

"People really support each other here, they want their friends to succeed. There was something Kevin [Drew, from Broken Social Scene] said to me a little while ago. We were hanging out with Torq [Campbell, from Stars] one night, and Kev said: 'our only responsibility is to all succeed so we can all still be there at the end.'"