Compared to the strutting reggaetón of *KICK ii* and the demonic club experiments of *KicK iii*, *kick iiii* captures Arca at her most serene. The crooning “Xenomorphgirl” is a kind of cyborg lullaby; “Esuna” curls up like a kitten in the soft swirls of Oliver Coates’ strings. But serenity is not the same as docility, and *kick iiii* also features some of Arca’s most coolly triumphant work to date. On the self-empowerment anthem “Queer,” Planningtorock testifies to their “tears of power,” while on “Alien Inside,” Garbage’s Shirley Manson solemnly intones the virtues of Arca’s self-proclaimed “mutant faith” over a shimmering shoegaze backdrop. Most affecting of all is Arca’s own proclamation on “Lost Woman Found”: “I’ve been walking toward the light for years now/And it’s the first time I feel the sun’s warmth on my skin, now that it’s my own/A lost woman, found.” The quest for one’s true identity has long been at the center of Arca’s work, and here at the heart of her sprawling, futuristic bildungsroman, she channels years of trauma into something like peace.
Where *KICK ii* delves into the lurching, snapping grooves of reggaetón, *KicK iii* applies an even more forceful touch to experimental beats that zigzag between futuristic club rhythms and vintage IDM. The strutting “Bruja” fires merciless ballroom salvos over car-crash drums and apocalyptic synth squeal; “Incendio” twists Arca’s perpetually morphing vocals over drums that punch like Brazilian funk carioca or Portuguese batida; and “Morbo” dissolves into a gooey morass of slow-motion techno. From there, things just get more unpredictable: The shuddering beats of “Fiera” and “Ripples” feel like they’re coming apart at the seams, while the shimmering melody of “Skullqueen” channels mid-’90s Aphex Twin, long a latent influence on Arca’s fractured syncopations. But the storm clouds part for the closing “Joya”: Over soft, feathery chimes, she sings sweetly, “I want to tell you/You are a jewel among men/I feel so much love.” After so much violent turmoil, to let us down so gently feels like an act of kindness.
Part of a four-album drop released virtually simultaneously in late 2021, *KICK ii* showcases Arca at her fiercest. Each album in the series has its own distinct flavor, and *KICK ii* focuses largely on reggaetón. Picking up the thread from *KiCk i* cuts like “Mequetrefe” and “KLK,” early-album highlights “Prada,” “Rakata,” and “Tiro” swing and snap with taut elastic energy, brittle dembow drums bobbing in empty space. Coproduced with Venezuelan-born DJ Cardopusher (Boys Noize also contributed to “Tiro”), the three songs are smeared with glassy trance synths that play up Arca’s own chopped-and-twisted vocal processing. Not everything is so upfront, though: “Luna Llena” and “Lethargy” dip into softer, more shadowy hues, while Arca’s experimental instincts come to the fore on “Araña,” “Femme,” and “Muñecas,” where synths and manipulated vocals seem to dissolve into oily, iridescent pools. Ultimately, she saves her biggest surprise for near the end: “Born Yesterday” pairs soaring vocals from Sia with a glitchy electronic ballad that shifts into a four-on-the-floor stormer before crumbling to dust once again, rolling up triumph and tragedy into one blazing fireball of an anthem.
There’s a liquid, surreal feeling that runs through *Pray for Haiti*, a sense of touching solid ground only to leave it just as fast. Between the bars of Newark rapper Mach-Hommy\'s dusty, fragmented beats (many courtesy of the production regulars of Griselda Records), he glimpses thousand-dollar brunches (“Au Revoir”), bloodshed (“Folie Á Deux”), and the ghosts of his ancestors (“Kriminel”) with spectral detachment—not uncaring so much as stoic, the oracle at the outskirts who moves silently through a crowd. He likes it grimy (“Magnum Band,” “Makrel Jaxon”) and isn’t above materialism or punchlines (“Watch out, I ain’t pulling no punches/So real I make Meghan Markle hop out and get the Dutches”), but is, above all, a spiritualist, driven by history (like a lot of his albums, this one is peppered with Haitian Creole), feel, and a quiet ability to turn street rap into meditation. “It’s crazy what y’all can do with some old Polo and Ebonics,” he raps on “The 26th Letter”—a joke because he knows it’s not that simple, and a flex because, for him, it is.