The Magnificent Tree is the third studio album by the Belgian band Hooverphonic, released on 26 September 2000. The cover features the band in front of a tree in the town of Kieldrecht, Belgium.[1]
Four singles were released from the album: "Mad About You", "Vinegar & Salt", "Out of Sight" and "Jackie Cane". The "Vinegar & Salt" and "Out of Sight" singles contain "Green" and "Sunday Morning", respectively, tracks composed for The Magnificent Tree that did not make it onto the final release. By November 2002, the album had sold 265,000 copies worldwide,[2] including 85,000 copies in Belgium alone.[3]
The U.S. release includes the track "Renaissance Affair" as a bonus track, which also originates from their previous album Blue Wonder Power Milk.
The album cost 8,000,000 Bef ($170,000) to record, one of the most expensive Belgian albums ever, partly because the first three weeks of recording were thrown away, as the group were apparently heading in the wrong direction. The record company hoped to sell 500,000 copies, much more than the 150,000 of the previous two albums (the band just received a gold album for 25,000 copies of "Blue Wonder Power Milk" in Belgium).[4]
"The Magnificent Tree" contains a sample of "Guinnevere" (misspelled as Guinevere) by Crosby, Stills and Nash. "Waves" is remarkably similar to "Changes", a 1966 psychedelic pop song by The Association. "Vinegar & Salt" contains a sample of "Je Me Repose."
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".[5]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."[9] Conversely, according to AllMusic, "Classic embryonic vocalic beauty from Geike Arnaert still carries the translucence of the band's signature ethereality" and "songs such as 'Out of Sight' and 'Mad About You' are thoroughly dramatic and make for an illustrious listen".[6]
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