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Fun’s name itself is the best descriptor of their music. The band’s second album, Some Nights, was released in February, and their single “We Are Young” skyrocketed to the top of the charts, making them the first band since 2002 to reach number one on the Billboard Top 100 with their first single.

Fun’s rise to success seems to have happened overnight. “We Are Young” was featured on an episode of Glee well before it became a hit single, and though the TV rendition gained plenty of notoriety, the band was determined to turn their original into a hit. By March, they were featured as the cover story for Billboard Magazine.

“It’s very exciting,” guitarist Jack Antonoff exclaims. “I mean, it feels very atypical from most chances and how things normally happen.”

The group likes to think of the band as an extension of their respective careers. Each member originally came from a different band, and Some Nights is only their second album together. Their individual experiences of struggling independently makes their newfound success all the more exciting, as well as grounding.

“It’s kind of like the feeling you have when you’re younger and you see your grade school teacher at the supermarket, and it’s weird because you can’t picture them outside of school,” Antonoff says. “It’s like two worlds colliding; and that’s basically how we feel when we look at our ticket sales or hear ourselves on the radio. It’s physically very weird.”

Fun makes their gratitude to their fans abundantly clear, expressing their appreciation regardless of their status as rising musicians.

“When things are kind of happening on a bigger level it can be slightly alienating for a lot of fans who have been there for a long time,” Antonoff explains. “It’s really vital to us that we remind all the people who have been supporting us for years that it’s still us, and we’re still just making songs we like and [are] happy to be able to play them for everyone.”

Coming from different musical backgrounds and having dealt with the music industry through separate paths, each member wants to build their career with integrity. Through their tenure as Fun, they’ve learned and matured together.

“In our early 20s we really hated the idea of being told what to do, and we were all about releasing our own record,” Antonoff says. “But now we have confidence. We know what we want to do and how to execute it. We’ve realized the benefits of being signed to a major label and are very appreciative of it.”

Regardless, they retain their hesitance about the industry. The album’s intro song, “Some Nights,” opens up with the line, “Tea parties and Twitter; I’ve never been so bitter.” However, it seems as if Fun has figured out a way to work on their own terms.

“We have a code that we follow which is basically, in a non-arrogant way, to just do whatever we want whenever we want,” Antonoff explains. “At the end of the day, it’s really us out there; it’s our songs, our faces, our visions. We’re constantly putting ourselves in positions where we’re surrounded by people who really understand that and can help that process. I think it’s pretty rare that we can play by our own rules and also work with bigger companies; usually those two don’t go hand in hand.”

The members of Fun seem comfortable with their current status. Along with huge success, they are happy with the way things have worked out and look forward to continue making music people love. But most importantly of all, they’re having fun doing it.

Fun performs on April 30 at Cabaret du Mile End. Tickets are $16.50.

www.collider.com

The less you know about The Cabin in the Woods, the better chance you’ll enjoy it. Co-written by Joss Whedon (Firefly, Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and directed by fellow Buffy writer Drew Goddard, hardcore fans won’t need much more than the blunt tagline to know what to expect: “Five friends go to a remote cabin in the woods. Bad things happen.”

For those of you who might need more convincing, the basic premise is to take a classic horror movie and turn it on its head. On one level, this movie really is just a run-of-the-mill, blood and guts extravaganza, with the victims embodying the five classic stereotypes of the horror genre: the athlete, the nerd, the slut, the fool, and the virgin. But this classic formula is given a sinister twist once the audience realizes that they aren’t the only ones watching the mayhem unfold.

The film pays tribute to the horror genre while simultaneously mocking itself. At some points, it’s reminiscent of Scary Movie, although not quite as ridiculous. Where many scary movies boost their production value through gruesome new weapons and fake organs-often at the expense of dialogue and character development-Cabin features Whedon’s trademark wit, brilliantly delivered by a dream cast of both veteran and up-and-coming actors. Heartthrobs Chris Hemsworth (Thor) and Jesse Williams (Grey’s Anatomy) play the athlete and the nerd, respectively, and newcomers Kristin Connolly and Anna Hutchison play the virgin and the slut with gusto. Fran Kranz steals the show as the foolish stoner, and established actors Richard Jenkins (Burn After Reading, Step Brothers) and Bradley Whitford (The West Wing) also add some unexpected flavour. The main cast brings depth to characters that are initially presented as archetypal, giving the audience a gory horror movie with all the familiar plot points, while also offering a chance to actually root for the young victims.

  The film’s pacing keeps it from feeling too much like any other tired, predictable scary movie. As promised, it’s a slasher film, but Whedon and Goddard’s unique perspective on horror, namely frequent and unique scene cuts, are enough to keep the audience guessing, and ensures that there is never a dull moment. By the end of the movie, so many questions about human nature and juxtaposing perspectives have been brought up that one might want to head right back into the theatre and watch it again. It’s a brilliant mix of bloodshed and ironic humour that is thoroughly the product of Joss Whedon, and it’s great.

Jim Anderson

It’s the taping for an early November episode of venerable UK music show Later… with Jools Holland and 24-year-old Al Spx is making her television debut with only a single to her Cold Specks moniker. She stands in the centre of room, bathed in a blue spotlight, hands clasped and eyes closed, and launches into a haunting a capella gospel version of Bascom Lamar Lunsford’s “Old Stepstone.” The rest might soon be history. Her performance garnered heaps of praise on both sides of the Atlantic, record deals were officially announced with Arts & Crafts in Canada and Mute in the UK, and her debut album I Predict A Graceful Expulsion is set for release next month. It was a showstopping debut, but it almost didn’t happen.

“I lost my passport the night before I was supposed to fly out and it was the most expensive mistake I’ve ever made,” says Spx. “I had to get an emergency passport, got there in time, found out my amp was broken, my throat was really bad. I was terrified.”

A native of Etobicoke, ON, Spx began with humble musical aspirations, writing songs as a product of “boredom” and playing the occasional show in the kitchens and backyards of friends during university. Cold Specks as it is wasn’t an idea until a few years ago when the older brother of a friend in the UK took an interest in her early, private demos and convinced her to fly to London to work with him.

“I didn’t think much of them,” says Spx of those demos. “He stole a copy [from his brother] then spent months phoning me up trying to get me to work with him, so I went out to work with him.”

From there, the two arranged the songs, found Spx a band, and developed her sound. She describes her music as “doom soul” and chuckles when I bring it up.

“We came home one night and we were updating the [Facebook band page] and I jokingly wrote ‘doom soul,'” she explains. “The next day a blog had picked up on it and it just went [kaboom].”

“I don’t really like to categorize things and I think when I have to it’s funny to say something like ‘doom soul.’ It’s dark and it’s also kind of soulful.”

It’s accurate for a joke. Songs on I Predict A Graceful Expulsion draw on blues, gospel, and folk traditions, anchored by Spx’s husky, quivering powerhouse of a voice. It’s an arresting instrument, and amazingly something she didn’t know she possessed until high school.

“I took a music and computers course and we had to have a live instrument on one of the projects and I decided to sing,” says Spx. “I had no idea that I could until I played it to my teacher who told me that I could sing, that I could hit notes.”

Spx is a self-taught musician, which made the process of translating her ideas to a full band difficult. For example, she based her guitar tuning on six notes that most closely resembled the sound of an oud, a traditional North African and Middle Eastern instrument.

“They found it really hard to learn my songs because they’re not very structured. The tuning’s completely random. I don’t believe in counting beats-it’s not that I don’t, but I just have a hard time doing it.”

The result is an album peppered with fluid, off-kilter rhythms and phrasing, like on lead single “Holland,” “Elephant Head,” and album closer “Lay Me Down.” As laborious as it may have been to get the band on the same page, everything comes together to create Spx’s unique musical voice, one she never expected to take her this far.

“I just thought I’d record some songs on my laptop and pass them around to friends.”

I Predict A Graceful Expulsion is out May 22. For more information visit www.coldspecks.com

I’ll admit it: I used to download music illegally. Let’s face it, nearly everyone who owns a computer with Internet access has, at one point in their life, downloaded a song, album, or even an entire musical collection through suspicious avenues. It’s become so popular that entire music stores have restructured their inventory to contain fewer CDs and more books, DVDs, and other music-related paraphernalia in order to remain in the black at the end of each year.

I stopped downloading music a couple of years ago. People often give me an odd look when I confess that my raving love for music is coupled with great enjoyment of actually purchasing the physical copy of the album. To say that my sudden change of heart came from some sort of moral conflict, a desire to do the ‘right thing,’ would be a lie. I stopped downloading music when my hard drive was corrupted and years of files vanished because of my downloading. As I returned to buying CDs, I found myself enthralled with cover art, the booklets, the song lyrics, the liner notes, and the feeling I was finally supporting the artists I love.

Over the years, I’ve encountered plenty of resistance from self-proclaimed “record label haters” who have condemned my habit of buying physical albums. These haters all have the same argument: “I never buy albums because they don’t encourage the artist. All it does is feed the greedy record labels who starve musicians and keep all the money for themselves. I download my music, but I also go to artists’ concerts instead. That’s the way a true fan supports musicians.” Excuse me?

First of all, let me address the issue of the supposed minimal amount of money artists receive from album sales. Admittedly, I am not a budding artist, so I don’t know anything about the standard entry-level contract. But, through speaking with musicians, I’ve learned that they do actually get some money when they sell albums! It might seem obvious, but that little fact is something record label haters seem to forget. In their own world, these people imagine that every single dollar from album sales goes to the record label and none to the musicians. But in the real world, when I buy an album, I directly contribute to the livelihood of the artists I love, however little money that may be.

Secondly, record label haters like to blame the labels for stifling the development of artists through poor deals. What they forget is that without the resources of their label, most artists we know and love would never come to be. Burning CDs may seem like a very simple thing for the average consumer, but, having been involved in the making of many CDs, I can tell you that recording is an extremely long and strenuous process. A good album requires high quality recording equipment, costly mixing software, and an enormous amount of time and know-how, and that’s excluding the work that goes into simply distributing and selling the album. Unless a band has a huge amount of money available as an initial investment-which is rarely the case-artists must rely on the resources that a record label can offer them.

Finally, for those who refuse to buy albums but contribute to the artist by going to concerts, remember this: you may be giving money to the artist, but you’re also giving a whole lot of money to the promoter, the venue, the sound engineers, and to the equipment sellers. Before spitting on CD purchasers like me, give thanks to the albums and record labels, both of which allow the artist to not just spread their music but feed their family. That is what a true fan should do.

-Christopher Nardi

McGill-Queen’s University Press

Elizabeth Hillman Waterston enrolled at McGill in September 1939-the same month that Hitler’s Panzer divisions first rolled into Poland and World War II began. When one thinks about how fraught with tension the McGill campus has been this year, with students locking horns over issues like the Quebec government’s proposed tuition fee increases, it is hard to even imagine how volatile campus politics must have been in Hillman’s time, when government proposals concerned policies of mass conscription, and when fighting for a cause was meant in the literal sense of the word.   

Hillman, now a professor emeritus at the University of Guelph, has fortunately made the tricky task of imagining what the McGill campus was like during World War II a much easier one, having just published her memoirs, Blitzkrieg and Jitterbugs: College Life in Wartime, 1939-1942 with the McGill-Queen’s University Press. The book is written in a lively and engaging style, bringing to light a remarkable viewpoint of World War II, and of a very different student life compared to today’s.

On the one hand, Hillman’s view of the war is an abstract one, formed from the confines of an isolated ivory tower which remained unaffected by the fighting itself: Montreal was far from the tangible dangers of the war, and sonorous lectures,  “freshette tea parties,” and essay assignments continued in defiance of the Nazi threat.   

Yet on the other hand, Hillman makes it patently clear that the war still haunted McGill campus life, radically politicising classes and classmates alike, and transforming the university into a vital cog in Canada’s war machine: many students and younger professors signed up to the armed forces and were shipped off to Europe, the Middle East, or Asia; trigonometry professors were rushed off to help advise the government on how to lay mines and sink U-boats; multilingual professors were commissioned to crack enemy codes; chemistry classes focused on testing different forms of poisonous gases; physics classes specialised in improving radar technologies; psychology research looked at pain tolerance to assess the effects of torture; and female students spent a lot of their classes “knittin’ for Britain,” sending over knitted woolen clothes for families left homeless by the London Blitz.

Hillman’s main achievement in Blitzkrieg and Jitterbugs is her creation of a sense of immediacy throughout the book, using the present tense effectively to press home how urgent and extraordinary the wartime situation was, interlacing the prose with bold and daunting student newspaper headlines like, “Canada Declares War on Japan,” and “Nazis place 1,000 Czech Students in Concentration Camps.” Even more striking is how Hillman contrasts this state of global urgency with the cheerful jocularity of student life, in one breath mentioning the brave and desperate fighting of the alpine ski soldiers in the Norwegian snows, while in the next-in a twist of irony-recounting the fun, frivolous and carefree student skiing trips to the Laurentian mountains.    

Other less savoury aspects of campus life are explored with gusto. In particular, Hillman flashes a torch onto the gender discrimination of the day, pointing out the complete absence of women in the faculties of law and mathematics, and noting the fact that Quebec women were not even granted the vote until 1940. Equally well-observed is how separate the anglophone Montreal community was from the francophone community during the war, socially as well as linguistically.    

What makes the reading of this book so unsettling is how external politics managed to pervade every aspect of academia so thoroughly. It is not just about the classes using their expertise to help with the war effort; it is also the more remarkable and shocking fact that even English literature classes began to proselytize about the merits of warfare, with professors championing the virtues of Chaucer’s man-at-arms, and lauding Milton’s vows to oppose tyranny at all costs. Even more shocking is how the highest form of feedback in physical education classes was to attain the grade of “fit for service.”    

The most disappointing facet of the book is that it finishes in 1942, when the war is still very much in the balance. Furthermore, there is not quite enough of a discussion about what the book’s characters went on to do later on in their lives-a topic that would have made for an interesting epilogue. But for the most part, Blitzkrieg and Jitterbugs is a highly enjoyable read, as well as being a highly informative glimpse into McGill’s past.