aespa bring their SYNK:COMPLæXITY, to Seattle
It’s immediately obvious when you walk into any K-Pop show that fans are dedicated to supporting the band. It’s easy to see this through clothing, merch lines, and filled seats, but also by the number of people wielding their Lightsticks, also known as Fanlights. These can come in many shapes and sizes and can even be synced across the audience for homogenous displays of dancing lights that follow the beats of the music. The prices aren’t anything to balk at but color me jealous seeing everyone else waving theirs around the whole show.
aespa, which symbolizes the combination of “Avatar and Experience” with the English word “Aspect”, is a powerhouse of four members including Winter, Karina, Ningning, and Giselle. The band debuted in November 2020 and has continued to release worldwide hits, including releases in Japanese.
Given how fast many of these touring K-Pop artists sell out arenas and have tickets selling for hundreds of dollars, I was surprised to see that the ground floor of the show was fully set up as a seated show. Realistically this didn’t last as most folks were standing and cheering throughout, but it did give the audience a spot to sit down during each act of the show, which included cinema-quality storyline videos accompanying their SYNK:COMPLæXITY tour.
Personally, I would love to see what kind of up-and-coming acts would open for groups like this, but that wasn’t the case here. The show kicked off with a high-quality visual hype video on the towering screens at the back of the stage for aespa themselves and it obviously worked. So many people had their phones locked on to where the members would be walking out from, and when they did, the crowd went wild and the cameras went to work. These women know how to engage the audience and dance with the cameras broadcasting onto those towering screens. Most of the people I saw recording with their phones were actually recording these giant screens instead of the women themselves.
With 2026 including the release of their second album titled Lemonade and my favorite single release “Kiss n Tell,” the audience was on top of singing along with every song, including the woman near me scream-singing in a Toad voice. We got to hear songs from the album including “WDA (Whole Different Animal”, “Bite”, and “Lemonade” itself, as well as older tracks like “Whiplash,” “Black Mamba,” and “Angel #48”. What we didn’t get to hear were some other notable tracks like “Drama” and some others I heard folks complaining about.
A few tracks into the set, I noticed that one member had made their way down the steps off the stage. I thought this may have been part of the show, but after a couple more songs, the first act ended, and the show continued on with 3 members. Eventually Ningning informed us that Giselle wasn’t feeling well and wouldn’t be able to join for the rest of the show. This absolutely devastated the group of men behind me, as Giselle was who he was looking forward most to seeing and possibly proposing to at some point based on my eavesdropping. Ningning requested that we as the audience should fill in for Giselle’s parts as necessary.
One thing you’ll always hear me rave about for a show is an outfit change, and the fact that this show had four acts allowed for a couple of different outfit changes. For Act 3, we were treated to members singing solos and duets from the SYNK EPs that were also released this year. Other setlists show that Giselle was unsurprisingly supposed to have her solo and duet with Ningning, but unfortunately that wasn’t the case for us. Something that blew me away in Act 4 was the inclusion of a mix of “Dirty Work” and “Dark Arts,” where only the dancers stayed on stage and performed skillful dance moves with the cameras actually focusing on them for this section. This really showed off the amazing dance skill that each backup dancer had, and left me wanting more, but this was unfortunately just a short interlude.
While we all expected an encore after Act 4, what I didn’t expect was a short interlude of the screens playing some of the popular dances from the group’s music videos which was then followed up by the camera finding people in the audience to show off their dance skills along with the videos on a replay. These dances came with wildly varying degrees of skill amongst the audience, and one song had the cameras focused on an amazing dance crew of limes. Eventually Winter, Ningning, and Karina made their way back on stage in cozier outfits and spent some quality time walking around the stage waving to different sections of the audience while they sang some more songs that didn’t include big dance numbers. It all concluded with a couple photos with the audience behind them, as well as the group sadly pointing to a spot where Giselle should’ve been for the photo.
Photos: David Conger
