[4] Editors at AllMusic rated this album 4 out of 5 stars, with critic Liam Martin writing that "each track contain enough creative vitality to grow into unique forms" and that the music "feels very organic, brought about by the spontaneity of the performances, the brief window of time in which it was recorded, and Holden's own evolutionary arc".

[8] Loud and Quiet's Sam Walton rated this release a 9 out of 10, characterizing it as "50 minutes of undeniably chopsy playing" that has "the emotive range of Holden’s compositions that lend the album its lasting appeal beyond knockabout jam-band fun".

[1] Chal Raven's review for Pitchfork Media scored The Animal Spirits a 7.4 out of 10, calling this "colossal" leap from Holden's earlier work, leaving him "now a bandleader of a live ensemble rather than a solitary synth programmer, [so] he has opened the door to an entirely different sort of career for himself, one where concerns for the dancefloor shrink away to nothing, and the possibilities of repetition are infinite".

[13] In Record Collector, Alex Neilson scored this release 4 out of 5 stars, stating that it "sticks to a broadly similar blueprint [as Holden's previous work] – kaleidoscopic electronics, abstract tonescapes and ethnographic samples – but this album owes more to cosmic jazz than its Pagan Britain-inspired predecessor".

[14] In a five-star review for The Skinny, Corrie Innes called this album "a dizzying, immersive work which blends natural and synthetic sounds together – shot through with jazz and Moroccan influences – to create a cinematic world that’s as expansive and diverse as it is terse and claustrophobic, and it's stunning".