KiCk i

As she walks the walk and talks the talk, she makes it clear that KiCk i is her fullest vision yet for herself, the culmination of eight years of musically and visually rocketing outside the box, bridging seemingly diametrically opposed forces, and pursuing her muse no matter how strange others might find it. When she lets out a soft chuckle at the track’s end, she’s earned it.

The sensory overload she tends to serve up will continue to confound many – even if this is her most accessible and celebratory record to date. Needless to say, her presentation of what she describes as “gender euphoria,” provides the perfect blueprint to a more healthy, embracing, and confident exploration of the concept and conversation of gender and identity in popular music.

Standout track by far is La Chiqui where trans artist Sophie and Arca go head to head, like two tall, sonic waveforms. Extraordinary. [Sep 2020, p.83]

The record dazzles with its detail, beguiles with its lyrical performances and leaves a lasting impression with powerful songwriting.

KiCk I offers up an even broader palette than previously, while keeping up a steady diet of trademark dissonance alongside those slightly more overground ambitions.

Shygirl's hard-edged yet sensual delivery on "Watch" is another fine example of KiCk i's forward-looking femininity, while "La Chíqui" is as brilliantly unhinged as a team-up between Arca and SOPHIE should be, with self-destructing beats and vocals that reach for the skies. These kinds of unapologetic contradictions and fragments coexist on KiCk i in startling, beautiful, and genuine ways, making it a complete, and triumphant, portrait of Arca's artistry.

‘KiCk i’ incorporates pop, experimental, noise, electronica and psychedelia into one project. Amid a highly acclaimed career, Arca’s latest album presents a new high-water mark.

By far the bounciest, most ecstatic song cycle of Arca’s career, the album is a celebration of actualization, whether that’s spurned by finding harmony internally or in communion with another.

Arca joins a long line of musical chameleons. The emancipatory promise of Arca’s project—a world beyond binaries, categories, and convention itself—remains thrilling, even when her tottering steps don’t quite reach that wished-for horizon.

KiCk I is a consistently enjoyable, so the fact it still feels like something of an anti-climax is testament only to Arca’s history of braveness and originality.

The main problem it faces is trying to successfully combine her new, slower palate with the tense, rapid-fire elements she's known for. To anyone who has been listening to her discography for long, this is clearly something that will be difficult for anyone to pull off. And to her credit, she tries.

Her multiple selves clash more often than they connect. [Aug 2020, p.110]

While KiCk i is not as subversive as the work of Arca’s black contemporaries such as Zebra Katz, who don’t benefit from her level of exposure, it nonetheless offers a red pill to a more hopeful future.

Far from being some utopian unity of the opposites her work has summoned – beyond binaries – she’s still clearly experimenting and sometimes failing. [Aug 2020, p.48]