So, what do I write?
My thought here (as is the case in most of my academic writing and teaching) is that I want someone who may not know the band to be able to hear the music and decide based on that. For instance, here's a groovy band from Portland called The Satin Chaps:
Here's what I wrote about them (pre-editorial intervention):
Portland’s The Satin Chaps channel the earliest days of rock in the Northwest: the Wailers and the Ventures leave a clear mark on their predominately instrumental grooves. Mix in a bit of Booker T and the MGs and Herb Alpert and the result is fun, danceable music. With The Moonspinners. Vito’s, 927 Ninth Ave., 397-4053. Vitosseattle.com. 9pm.
I would read that and be able to piece together what they might sound like, that they're from Portland, and that they're fun to dance to (as the video suggests). I didn't mention that Eric Hedford used to be the bassist for the Dandy Warhols, nor did I mention that they have a thing for matching ascots. To me, those don't really have anything to do with the music.
I've noticed that people in this world have a different definition of genre than classical musicians do. Genre here is more akin to style, I think: Afro-pop, shoegaze, extratone speedcore, etc. Genre in classical music is more akin to form: symphony, art song, etc. The promo blurbs say things like "This group from Everett brings their gritty blend of surf rock, shoegaze, and Norwegian black metal to town. Don't worry: the catchy hooks are still there." People in the pop music world (and particularly in the indie music world) seem to have an unusual obsession with genre: I once had a (very circular) conversation with a girl who really wanted to create a new genre of music. My argument was that it would be practically impossible, since all genres are (as my hypothetical review a few sentences ago suggests) are basically hybrids of those that came before. My issue with this conception of genre is that genres are either too broad (i.e., "hip-hop," "country") or too narrow (fans of EDM are good for this) to be useful.
I'll go again to an analogy with food. Menus seem to have a few different strategies for identifying the food being served. First, (from Local 360), you can order a Smoked Pork Shank with warm potato salad, and mustard jus. I know what all of those things are, and I can imagine what will show up on the plate in front of me in 20 minutes or so. In contrast, from WD-50 (one of the most amazing meals I've ever had, by the way), you can order Parsnip cake, coconut cream cheese, carrot, walnut. I don't have a clue what that will be like: I've been given a list of rather disparate ingredients, and my job is to somehow assemble them in my head into something that will soon go into my belly. I find it difficult not only to imagine how they will combine in principle, but also how that combination might taste. Here's where expertise comes in: someone who is an experienced chef will likely have a better "imagination" than I will. There are so-called "fusion" restaurants, which combine ingredients and/or techniques from different regions: I had a moo-shu burrito at a Asian/Mexican fusion place in New York one time--this seems to be analogous to "genre" identification ("it's like punk meets hip-hop"). I've been to other restaurants that are concerned not only with the ingredients, but also where they come from.
So, if I were to write about music in the same way people write about food, I could talk about the ingredients by themselves, the ways in which the ingredients combine, the places from which the ingredients came, or the broad philosophy of the way things are combined. The ingredients, I suppose, could comprise genres ("a gritty blend of surf rock, shoegaze, and Norwegian black metal") or representative other bands ("the Wailers and the Ventures mixed with Booker T and Herb Alpert").
Now, the trick is to do any of this in a compelling way in 50 words...