Arca XXXXX
Released Jul 31, 2026 XL Recordings
Established consensus 8 professional reviews Updated Oct 8, 2026
Broadly positive consensus
Arca's XXXXX announces itself as an audacious collision of ritual, club physics and raw confession, a record where voice becomes instrument and identity is constantly transmuted.
How ChoruScore worksCritics' Top Tracks
The songs critics returned to most
Fxck
5 critic mentions
“\u201cFxck\u201d starts with a stuttered \u201cI\u201d for \u201cI wanna fuck,\u201d then asks in the chorus to be loved and wrecked” — Shatter The Standards
Eidolon
3 critic mentions
“Murder, a burning city, and glory are all shared in the opening four lines of the rapid rhythmic tension \u201cEidolon,\u201d” — Shatter The Standards
Willow
2 critic mentions
“The sound of a tolling bell on Willow rings into a song that’s harsh and uncompromising” — The Guardian
Full critic consensus
Arca's XXXXX announces itself as an audacious collision of ritual, club physics and raw confession, a record where voice becomes instrument and identity is constantly transmuted. Across six professional reviews, critics praise the album's volatile sequencing, its mix of abrasive electronic textures and tender exposure, and the way standout tracks such as “Fxck”, “Eidolon”, “Taconeando” and “Finisher” function as both rites and pop hooks that puncture the machinery of the body. The critical consensus leans positive: XXXXX holds an 80/100 consensus score across 6 reviews, with reviewers consistently flagging mid-album peaks and a theatrical closing that lingers.
Reviewers agree that the best songs on XXXXX trade contrast - quiet and noise, mechanization and flesh, performance and vulnerability - to dramatic effect. Several critics single out “Fxck” as the record's charged centrepiece for its reggaeton-tinged drive and provocative lyrics, while “Eidolon” and “Finisher” are praised for glitch eruptions and ominous strings that reframe emotional stakes. Others highlight “Willow” and “Taconeando” for their ceremonial or comic club energy, and tracks like “Raver” and “Syncope” for pushing Arca's IDM-and-club fusion into theatrical, almost sacramental territory.
Not all critics read the collection the same way: some celebrate its unabashed experimentation and post-human divahood, while others find its cacophony occasionally overwhelming. Still, the professional reviews cohere around the idea that XXXXX is a daring, often brilliant statement in which glitch aesthetics, bilingual performance and bodily appetite make for some of Arca's most compelling and unsettling work to date. Below you will find the full coverage and track-by-track takes that explain why critics repeatedly point to these best tracks on XXXXX as essential listening.
Track Ratings
How critics rated each track, relative to this album (0-100). Only tracks that made critics feel something are rated.
No End
Willow
Eidolon
Heart
Syncope
Raver
Cinch
Fxck
Finisher
Taconeando
Futurality
Grip
Enraptured
Throb
Everything
Sueño
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What Critics Are Saying
Deep insights from 11 critics who reviewed this album
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Critic's Take
Arca's XXXXX is at once frightening and abrasive and yet delicate, which makes the best tracks - such as “Taconeando” and “Throb” - feel like cinematic ruptures and small consolations. Menna Wilson's voice lingers on the album's collage of whispers, glitches and throbbing bass, so the best songs on XXXXX are the ones that balance terror with intimacy. The record reads like a quasi-soundtrack, which is why listeners searching for the best tracks on XXXXX will find “Taconeando” emblematic of its abrasive tenderness. Overall, the album's fusion of mythology, sexuality and avant-garde electronica makes the standout moments feel both alien and intimately human.
Key Points
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The best song, “Taconeando”, is best for its visceral, cinematic sound design and abrasive tenderness.
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The album's core strength is its fusion of avant-garde electronica with themes of technology, desire and posthuman intimacy.
Themes
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Critic's Take
Arca's XXXXX is dense, unrelenting and often brilliant, and the review picks out a few best tracks that crystallize its power. The breathless, grimy rebuke of patriarchy on “Fxck” and the tolling-bell severity of “Willow” stand as two of the best songs on XXXXX, both searing and uncompromising. Elsewhere “Raver” is singled out as a best track for how it jumbles mainstream EDM building blocks into beautiful, disorienting sound design. Overall, the album's best tracks show Arca layering classical composition, deconstructed club music and pop into visceral, body-forward pieces.
Key Points
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The best song is “Fxck” for its breathless, grimy rebuke to patriarchy and visceral club energy.
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The album's core strengths are dense, layered production that fuses classical elements, deconstructed club music and pop into body-forward compositions.
Themes
Critic's Take
From the first hush of Arca on XXXXX the record stakes its claim: the best tracks - “No End”, “Heart” and “Sueño” - are moments where her experimental textures meet emotional clarity. Bedsaul writes with exacting, analytic affection, celebrating how “No End” whispers and sets the cavernous tone, while “Heart” arrives as a glistening, earnest standout of colour and mutation. The closing plea of “Sueño” crystallises the album's capacity to translate psychic suffering into transcendent performance. This account answers searches for the best songs on XXXXX by highlighting those tracks that marry Arca's avant-garde impulses with palpable feeling.
Key Points
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“Heart” is the best song for its surprising earnestness and vividly mutating production.
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The album’s core strength is translating psychic and performative suffering into dense, humanised experimental sound design.
Themes
Sh
Critic's Take
Arca returns with XXXXX, and the best songs on XXXXX are the ones that marry appetite with performance: “Eidolon”, “Fxck”, and “Taconeando”. The reviewer revels in Arca's blunt Spanish lines and operatic vocal collapses, arguing that “Eidolon” binds murder and love at once, while “Fxck” trades in glitch-pop bravado and “Taconeando” converts that appetite into dancefloor comedy. These tracks stand out because the beats hold jokes and violence in equal measure, and because Arca refuses to soften either impulse for clarity or comfort. The result is an album where the best tracks are those that demand both reverence and mischief from the listener.
Key Points
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The best song is the one that fuses violent imagery with love in a single register, exemplified by "Eidolon".
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The album's core strengths are bilingual bluntness, theatrical beats, and balancing humor with gravity.
Themes
Critic's Take
There is a restless intimacy at the heart of XXXXX, where Arca retreats into introspection and distortion, and the best tracks - “Fxck”, “Eidolon” and “Finisher” - crystallize that uneasy beauty. The reviewer's phrasing lingers on how “Fxck” functions as the album's most palatable gem, its reggaeton-tinged backbone and lewd lyrics giving the record a rare hook. Meanwhile “Eidolon” channels raw vulnerability into glitch eruptions, and “Finisher” surprises with ominous strings and a murmured poem that reframes the album's emotional stakes. Together these standout songs show why XXXXX is intractable, disorienting and often brilliant, even when cacophony threatens to overwhelm.
Key Points
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“Fxck” is the album’s standout for its accessible reggaeton-tinged rhythm and provocative lyrics.
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The album’s core strength is its fearless blend of distortion, vulnerability and instrumental interludes that hold the chaos together.
Themes
Critic's Take
Arca returns on XXXXX with a violently precise set of tracks that make the best songs—like “Syncope” and “Enraptured”—feel inevitable and unavoidable. Mid-album staples such as “Raver” and “Fxck” sustain momentum by trading dead stops and blasts of noise for firmer propulsive patterns. This is a record where the best tracks on XXXXX are concentrated in the middle, each shift landing with theatrical force.
Key Points
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“Syncope” is the album’s apex, assembling its harshest elements into a full-force climax.
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XXXXX’s strength is its volatile, precisely constructed contrasts between explosive noise and carefully shaped quiet passages.
Themes
Critic's Take
In her inimitable, ceremonially ecstatic voice, Arca frames XXXXX as an invitation to transmute, where the best tracks double as rites. The opener “Willow” arrives like church bells in space, a cleansing ceremony that ushers you in. Mid-album cuts such as “Raver” and “Cinch” capture the sweaty, enraptured euphoria of the club, and the centerpiece “Everything” centers a soft-hard percussion sequence that threatens to consume you. Read as a whole, these best tracks on XXXXX argue for Arca's divahood as a kind of post-human ritual, part pop, part sacrament.
Key Points
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“Everything” is the album's emotional and sonic centerpiece, built around consuming soft-hard percussion.
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The album's strengths are its ritualistic divahood, genre-blending alchemy, and evocative rave ceremonies.
Themes
Critic's Take
In his vivid, slightly breathless mode, Andrew Ryce presents Arca's XXXXX as a confrontational, club-leaning record whose best tracks cut deepest. He flags “Willow” as an early peak, describing its jerky trap-into-dubstep pivot that pirouettes around the quantized grid. He likewise singles out “Syncope” and “Finisher” for their avant-garde and frantic virtues, respectively, arguing these songs show why the best tracks on XXXXX feel like a leap forward. The closing run, headed by “Everything”, lands as one of Arca's most emotionally stirring moments, a desperate, distorted plea that crystallizes the album's mechanical-and-flesh theme.
Key Points
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“Everything” is the emotional centerpiece, ending the album with a harrowing, distorted plea.
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The album's strengths are its adventurous production and willingness to fuse IDM, club, and glitch into confrontational songs.
Themes
Critic's Take
In her characteristically forensic prose Mary Chiney finds the best songs on XXXXX to be those that cut through the machinery, especially “Fxck” and “Sueño”. She emphasises that “Fxck” is the record's centrepiece, a cathartic club track with a chorus demanding to "kill the father", while “Sueño” closes the album as the most exposed, a raw scream that undoes the album's processing. The review frames these tracks as exemplars of Arca's project: voice as prosthesis, the mixtape logic made album, and the collision of human and machine that makes XXXXX feel both deliberate and unsettling.
Key Points
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‘Sueño’ is the standout because its raw scream undoes the album's processing and delivers emotional closure.
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The album’s strengths are its bold production choices and the use of voice as a prosthesis to explore machine-human and gender archetypes.