In a highly positive review for Pitchfork, Laura Snapes awarded Varmints with the website's "Best New Music" label, writing: "[Anna Meredith's] first wholly indepedent project reveals her to be one of the most innovative minds in modern British music: She wears her obvious theoretical grounding lightly and never lets it obstruct her ecstatic quest for new ideas and deranged stimuli. And Varmints is a knockout, the kind that makes you see cartoon stars."[3]