How to write a concert review

Know the band's current record and the last one. Know who is in the lineup tonight, because touring members and fill-in drummers are how reviews get corrected in the comments. Look up the venue's capacity so you can say "about half full" with some confidence. Bring a notebook or a phone with a notes app, and charge it.

Decide what you are there to answer. A review of a hometown band's record-release show asks a different question than a review of a national act passing through the Fillmore. The hometown question is usually "has this band gotten better, and can it hold this room." The national question is usually "was this worth the ticket, and what did they do that the record doesn't."

Most weak reviews fail because the writer only watched the stage. The show is also the crowd, the sound, the pacing and the room. Take notes on all of it, then decide later what matters.

• The sound. Was the mix clear, was the bass swallowing the vocals, did the engineer fix it by the third song. Readers who go to shows care about this.
• The crowd. How many, how old, how they moved, whether they knew the words, whether they thinned out before the encore.
• The pacing. Where the set sagged, where it caught, how the band handled a broken string or a long tune-up.
• The stage. Who talked to the crowd and what they said. A single quote from the stage is often the best line in the review.
• The openers. One or two sentences each, with the name spelled right. For local openers this may be the only press they get this year.
• The specific. The trumpet player who climbed the monitor, the drummer who counted in every song out loud. Details are what make a reader believe you were there.

Write down times. Set start, set length, encore. It sounds clerical, but "a 70-minute set with no encore" is a fact readers use.

The setlist is the skeleton; the review is not the setlist. Nobody wants twelve sentences that each start with "Next they played." Use the setlist to anchor two or three moments, then write about what those moments did to the room.

A workable ratio is one paragraph on the shape of the set (what they opened with, where the new material sat, how they closed), one or two on the moments that defined the night, and one on the overall feel. If you can get the full setlist, put it at the bottom as a list rather than folding it into the prose.

Feel is not the same as your mood. "I was tired" is not a review. "The band seemed tired, and the crowd went quiet for the middle third until the horn section came back" is. Attribute the feeling to something you observed.

The first paragraph decides whether anyone reads the second. Do not open with the weather, the parking, or the band's biography. Open with the thing that mattered most, which you will only know after the show is over.

• A moment: the second song, when the singer stopped mid-verse to let the crowd finish the line.
• A verdict with a reason: the new songs are better live than on the record, and the band knows it.
• A contrast: a sold-out room and a band that played like it was a Tuesday at the Hemlock.
• A fact that surprises: three of the five people on stage were not in the band a year ago.

Put the basics in the second paragraph: who, where, when, how full, what they were touring behind. A reader who only makes it two paragraphs in should still know what show you are describing.

A concert review has a natural shape, and you can use it every time without it reading as a template, because the content changes.

• Lede: the moment or the verdict.
• Facts: band, venue, date, crowd, tour context.
• The set: shape, two or three anchors, how it ended.
• The band: playing, singing, presence, one specific line about each key member.
• The room: sound, crowd, openers.
• The close: what this show tells you about where the band is right now.
• Setlist, if you have it.

Aim for 500 to 800 words for a headline act and 250 to 400 for a local bill. Longer is not more thorough, it is usually just less edited.

Fairness is not being nice. It is separating what the band controlled from what it did not, and saying which was which. A bad mix is the venue's problem unless the band brought its own engineer. A thin crowd on a rainy Monday is not evidence the band is finished. A sloppy set at a record-release show is fair game.

Say what was good even in a bad show and what was off even in a great one. A review with nothing but praise reads like a favor; a review with nothing but complaints reads like a grudge. Readers can tell, and bands can tell.

If you know the band, say so in one line at the top or bottom. In a scene this size everyone knows somebody, and disclosure costs less than being found out. If you left early, say when. If you could not see the stage, say that too.

Do not review the audience's taste. If the crowd loved something you did not, report both and let the reader sort it out.

• Spell every name correctly, including the openers and the venue. Check the band's own site, not a flyer.
• Confirm song titles against the record. "The one about the border" is a note, not a title.
• Attribute quotes from the stage as closely as you can. If you are not sure of the wording, paraphrase and say so.
• State the date and the venue in the text, not just the headline. Reviews get copied and lose their headlines.
• File fast. A review that runs a week later is a memoir.

When you get something wrong, fix it in the piece and note the correction. That is what makes the next review worth reading.

A concert review is a kind of article review — same job, a different room. If you want the mechanics laid out, a guide to writing an article review covers the parts that carry over: summary versus judgement, and backing an opinion with what was actually on the page — or the stage.