"The Magnificent Tree" holds a score of 57 out of 100 on the review aggregator website Metacritic based on reviews from four critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".MTV.com felt that, with the album, "Hooverphonic's sound has become increasingly hip and cosmopolitan, slowly processing out everything that made it so alluring in the first place", noting that "the nagging sense of something menacing behind these songs has practically disappeared."