Robert John - If You Don't Want My Love (1968/2018)

Long before he became a soft rock crooner, Robert John attempted a soulful soft pop album at the tail-end of the '60s for Epic. If You Don't Want My Love is a bit of a florid mess, piling up harmonies and horns at random, caught somewhere between sunshine pop and straight-up easy listening. Anybody who knows his later hits of "Sad Eyes" and "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" will recognize John's unerring flair for the dramatic an instinct so natural, it often seems weird, particularly when he's gliding into his falsetto for the chorus on almost every single song here, a trick that's particularly disconcerting on '60s pop standards like "Anyone Who Had a Heart/What the World Needs Now" and "I'm a Believer." This technique can be piercing, even grating no other singer could make Gary Puckett seem restrained, yet John manages to on his version of "Woman" but it does help him cut through the thick production that contains pretty much every late-'60s trick imaginable, from Baroque strings to bouncy vibraphones borrowed from Motown. All this makes If You Don't Want My Love an interesting pop cultural artifact, but it is also most certainly an acquired taste, what with all that keening, unnerving falsetto.