Rex Hosts The Lone Bellow in Concert; Tasty Brews On Tap at Voodoo Homestead (Tues., 11/3/15)

1) Three voices. One lone bellow. So goes the harmonization of The Lone Bellow, a Brooklyn-based indie-folk trio. Add production by Aaron Dessner (of The National) and brass and string arrangements by Bryce Dessner (also of The National), and you have 2015’s Then Came Morning, the group’s second album. You also have a superb follow-up to their self-titled debut. That debut, by the way, ranked on many a “Best of” list in 2013, from Paste to People. With new singles like “Fake Roses,” a song flush with imagery and subtle instrumentation, The Lone Bellow seems poised to repeat that acclaim. They’ve opened for the Avett Brothers and the Civil Wars. Tonight they headline the Rex Theater. Anderson East and Hugh Masterson open. 8 p.m. 1602 E. Carson St.. South Side. (CM)

2) It didn’t take long for award-winning Voodoo Brewery to outgrow its Meadville britches. The brewery’s not abandoning operations out of the small Crawford County seat. Rather, in January of this year, the owners opened Voodoo Homestead, a satellite pub which sells only Voodoo beer. The pub offers 12 beers on draft, though do check their website for availability. For the uninitiated, we recommend HooDoo. With this IPA, Voodoo promises your taste buds a journey down the seven “Cs.” (That’s seven different hops beginning with the letter C.) From the taste of things, we’re guessing one of those Cs is citra, making this piney brew the perfect summer beverage. As for the location, the chalked menu harks to their Meadville base; the old hoses under the cast-iron stairs hark to the location’s old function: firehouse and municipal building. Add in some ceiling art, including God granting Adam a bottle à la the Sistine Chapel, and you’ve got a space as funky as the suds served inside it. The pub also sells snacks and growlers. Mondays, veterans get a dollar off with ID. 205 E. 9th Ave., Homestead.

3) Our Brand is Crisis—And here’s yet another film based on a previous documentary. Let’s go back to 2002 in Bolivia. In a tightly contested race, a former Bolivian president is running for the office again and hires the American political consulting firm started by Clinton crony James Carville to run his campaign. In 2005, Rachel Boynton made a documentary about the event with the message that while there’s a lot of great things America can export, our style-over-substance political campaigning is not among them. And now George Clooney and Grant Heslov, using the earlier documentary as a guide, team up to produce this slightly fictionalized version of that 2002 election. It stars Sandra Bullock and Billy Bob Thornton as rival American politicos working their campaign “magic” on an unsuspecting South American country. Check Fandango for screens and times.

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