Concerts, like dimly lit chandeliers, are more impressive outdoors and more enchanting when adorned with strategically placed glow sticks. Light up the night sky with this deal to see Okkervil River outdoors at Upland Brewing Company in Bloomington. For $17, you get one general-admission ticket and nine tickets for food and beverages on Friday, August 31, at 6 p.m. (a $34 value). Doors open at 5 p.m. Food and beverage tickets can be redeemed for beer (four tickets) or burgers and sandwiches (five tickets) as well as snacks and water.

Critics have lauded Okkervil River for its emotionally gripping arrangements and poetic lyrics. After last year’s album, I Am Very Far, Pitchfork leveled frontman Will Sheff as “one of indie rock’s most ambitious thinkers: romantic anti-romantic weighing highly literate lyrics against an endlessly bleak worldview.” Yet to understand exactly what that means, it’s best to look at the verses Sheff weaves through the seven-piece Austin outfit’s layers of piano, violins, and horns. In the dreamy, melodious refrain from “The Rise,” Sheff and bassist Patrick Pestorius lull listeners with a back-and-forth, echoing verse that conjures a terrain alive with “fire painting on the pines / the water weeping from the ice.” Elsewhere, in “The Valley,” the lead track from I Am Very Far, Sheff navigates “the valley of the rock ‘n’ roll dead” with marching orders set to a percussive stomp. The music itself can range from the contemplative simplicity on 2005’s Black Sheep Boy to the catchy, rolling “Our Life Is Not a Movie or Maybe” from 2007’s breakout The Stage Names.

These indie rockers perform outside at the Upland Brewing Company’s brewpub. Concertgoers can use food and beverage tickets to start an alternative economy or sip Upland’s craft brews, which include the signature wheat beer that hides traces of organic coriander, chamomile, and orange peel. To pair with brews, grill masters fire up sandwiches and half-pound burgers packed with Fischer Farms beef.