Links of Interest (not lynx of interest; this is not a bobcat watching club, THIS IS GIRLPANTS)

News­flash: Unless you live in Port­land or some other pos­sibly myth­ical “cool” and “rainy” place, right now it’s hot and summer. So let’s listen to music and also read about it instead of going to Coney Island and staring at weir­does (or busting open a fire hydrant and dousing our body parts in it/making our chil­dren run through it/giving our gypsy cabs a free car­wash with it, as denizens of Bush­wick, Brooklyn are wont to do. Believe me, I’ve called 311 more than once already to come shut down aban­doned, gushing hydrants. Old Man Niina isn’t a water waster). (That’s not me in the pic­ture, either.)

But I digress. Below are some links that effec­tively update us on a por­tion of the fas­ci­nating matter that is music in the summer. 

• John Darnielle per­forms 2009’s The Life of the World to Come in its entirety, and you can view the video at Pitch­fork if you act quick-like etc.
• If you live in New York, you should plan to attend North­side Fes­tival. This year’s tremen­dous lineup includes Wavves, Au Revoir Simone, Titus Andron­icus, Liars, and about 928347 times more.
• Everyone ever has already done an “antic­i­pated summer releases” list, so I’m not gonna rehash. But heyo, Arcade Fire! They’ve put up the track listing for their highly antic­i­pated new album Sub­urbs, and with this track listing have sur­faced also some tracks for lis­tening. Below is a radio rip of “Ready to Start,” gor­geous and slow-building. You can also listen to “Month of May” here.
  Arcade Fire — “Ready to Start” 
   
• Indie Rock Café has a good post on recent summer releases that are easy to miss in the uproar over heavy hit­ters. Per­sonal high­light for me is the Lou Barlow song “Loser­core,” but the post also covers Cary Ann Hearst, Apollo, the Vita Ruins, and Com­mu­nist Daughter.
• Also, you should know that you can stream the Lou Barlow EP = Sen­tridoh III at Merge’s web­site. “Gravitate/One Machine” is so good. It’s hot out­side plus a thou­sand humidity today and this song is making me want to box someone.
• And finally. Does anyone inspire as much crit lately as Lady Gaga? I know this might be old news (and the pub­li­ca­tion title may be a tad hyper­bolic) but I follow this all-Gaga journal with fas­ci­na­tion; some recent pieces posted dis­cuss hys­teria, com­modity fem­i­nism, the Gaga/Illuminati con­nec­tion, and Gaga as Kate Bush response. (Another topic of note might be Gaga as George Bush response, but that’s not an article I’m going to write this summer.)