Keeping track

Arcade Fire

Photo: Hilary Leftik

MUSIC

Arcade Fire + The National
Radio City Music Hall, Wed 9 at 8pm
Bowie’s favorites are back after lead singer Win Butler lost his voice and underwent surgery.

Air + Kate Havnevik
Theater at Madison Square Garden, May 10 at 8pm
French duo Air, the band that made lounge music hip, works wonders with laptops in a live setting. Not unlike the headliner, Norwegian singer Kate Havnenik melds icy electronica with warm pop.

The Polyphonic Spree
Hammerstein Ballroom, May 11 at 8pm
It’s not easy undoing an image, but the Polyphonic Spree—known for its massed vocalists in brightly colored robes—is giving it a try: In advance of June’s politically oriented The Fragile Army, the band has switched to semimilitaristic, all-black uniforms.

Bang on a Can All-Stars + Daniel Johnston + Legendary Stardust Cowboy
Highline Ballroom, May 16 at 8pm
Tonight’s bill may be the most diverse of them all. Bang on a Can All-Stars tear up the classical-music envelope, collaborating with everyone from Philip Glass to DJ Spooky. Daniel Johnston, on the other hand, is a determined loner, who has been churning out charmingly (some would say “disturbingly”) tweaked pop since the late ’70s.

Deerhoof

Photo: Indra Dunis

Deerhoof with Dirty Projectors + Robert Stillman’s Horses
Irving Plaza, May 17 at 8pm
Bay Area trio Deerhoof has refined its pervasive quirks—disjointed rhythms, surreal lyrics—into something poppy and infectious.

The Secret Machines + Michael Gira + The Bellmer Dolls
Highline Ballroom, May 19 at 8pm
The stiff, metered psychedelia of Secret Machines blew up when the Austin-cum-Brooklyn band emerged a few years back. The group has turned its space-rock marathon performance into a full-on sensory experience with the addition of a light show.

PERFORMANCE

Ken Nordine
The Kitchen, May 16 and 17 at 8pm
That voice! Though he’s unknown to most by name, onetime Chicago radio announcer Ken Nordine’s impossibly deep, soothing and peculiar tones have graced countless ads and dozens of albums. The mid-’50s inventor of “word jazz”—Beat poetry for the prepsychedelic set—is back.

ART

Claude Cahun Public Art Exhibition
General Theological Seminary of the Episcopalian Church, May 18–20
She was from Jersey—Jersey off the coast of France: Cahun (a.k.a. Lucy Schwob) lived there from 1937 until her death in 1954, creating Surrrealist self-portraits that explore sexual identity.

Laurie McLeod Waterhaven Underwater Films
Water tower above 14th St at Washington St, Wed 9–May 19
Choreographer turned experimental multimedia artist McLeod conjures a dreamy undersea world and then projects the images through water onto water. For the festival she’s creating Waterhaven #3, which makes use of outdoor public space at night. Bring your raincoats, metaphorically speaking.

Design: Courtesy the dity of New York © 2004

COMMUNITY

High Line Design Preview
May 14 at 6:30pm, Great Hall, Cooper Union. R.S.V.P. to rsvp@thehighline.org.
The High Line redevelopment won’t be done until 2009, but landscape architect James Corner of Field Operations makes like Doc Brown, providing a glimpse of the future.

Plus:

• High fidelity: David Bowie curates the High Line Festival, recruiting pals Ricky Gervais, Arcade Fire and more to benefit the elevated park (which the fest isn’t on or, at times, even near). Our exclusive behind-the-scenes preview explains it all.
• Flipping the bird: Performance artist Laurie Anderson gets “weird” again, filling another show with feathered friends. A David Bowie interview.
• Pussy galore: The bizarre chanteuse Meow Meow gets ready to pounce.
• Cyberspace oddity: Exclusive! Bowie interviews Ricky Gervais by e-mail—sort of!
• Must sí: Ziggy zeroes in on ten Spanish-language flicks.
• Keeping track: More highlights of the High Line Festival.
• High Line: Behind the scenes: What does it takes to turn a stretch of land from overgrown weed patch to beautiful High Line? Adrian Benepe, commissioner of the Parks & Recreation Department, tells us.
• The Time Out New York High Line Guide: Your ultimate resource for swank eats, stylin' stores and everything under the trestle.
• High Line in progress: The developers of the High Line gave Time Out exclusive access to their bird’s-eye site photography. See how the construction zone stands today and a few details about what it will become.