So as asked for and promised after my Aespa recap I am back with thoughts on Le Sserafim tonight here in Washington DC. There are many so I will try to make it as cohesive as possible.
First off, I need to put a disclaimer that what I am about to describe is by no means shade to Aespa and even Twice, who are the two concerts I went to so far this year. That said, this concert was something completely different for a few major reasons.
100 percent of this concert was handheld mics. 100 percent. Now, handheld mics doesn’t automatically mean 100 percent live singing but I would put the ‘real vocals’ number at about 85 percent from where I was (virtually same seats I had for Aespa).
The irony for me is I’ve seen LSF get shaded for their vocals and Aespa praised for theirs but LSF really put forth a solid effort even if they didn’t always sound amazing but honestly that’s what live music at a concert sounds like.
I could hear them breathing and they sang mostly to what sounded like either band tracks or a live band (I couldn’t see any band nor did they acknowledge one so I assume they had concert tracks). The backtracks they did play were complimentary and not a replacement for their performance.
I often have seen YT videos identifying groups strengths and weaknesses and almost universally I see LSF lauded for stage presence and my god is that an accurate assessment. While Aespa (again no shade) had a very professional show, got on, did their songs, did their dances, said hi, said bye and that was that, LSF spent I would say almost 30-40 percent of the show hyping the crowd, engaging with the crowd, Sakura IN the crowd, etc. Also, it was like 5 Jihyos, no one was going through the motions, no one was just getting through it, all of them were engaged in every song with faces that looked like they were legit having the time of their lives.
And that energy fed the crowd, which in turn fed the performance. Again, Aespa did a solid show. The crowd was relatively engaged for Aespa but tonight was pretty insane. LSF even mentioned the crowd energy several times. From the sound check, which in Feb for Twice was the members walking and waving while tracks played and a brief intro, LSF had us jumping as they sang a few tracks and Yunjin talked about how she used to visit DC and whatnot.
Which brings me to what a difference (imo for a US audience) having an extrovert native English speaker able to talk and hype the crowd. Giselle is a fluent English speaker but her personality is not one to talk a whole lot and hype the crowd like Yunjin does. And of course Twice has no fluent English speakers. The other members also used a decent amount of English, both with the typical “are you having fun” “make some noise” and prepared speeches and other short phrases with a decent amount of translator usage as well.
So ultimately I went into this concert expecting it to be good based on what others have commented on here but was really wowed with how good they were. I would say I went in a casual and came out a Fearnot. To the point that I am contemplating heading up to NJ on Thursday to see them again lol.
Shout-out to those who said I would have a good time, you were right and then some.
Also shout-out to the two young ladies I ran into after the concert that drove from Cincinnati.
The merch lines were crazy and everything was sold out. I have a T-shirt from every concert I’ve been to but missed it for this one though I will see if I can find it online. I did get a light stick which automatically synced and changed colors throughout the show which was cool.
If I remember anything I missed I’ll drop it in the comments.
TLDR; LSF was amazing, stage presence was 1000/10, best concert in terms of energy and engagement from every person on stage.
Finally my only knock which is a mild one, it was a little on the short side at two hours with again maybe 30-40 min of crowd work overall and the usual video breaks.
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