Picture this: it's 1966, you're a major label, and you've just acquired one of the best rock groups in America for your roster. Not only that, but one of the band's chief strengths is its excellent original material. So what do you have them do for the first album under your direction? Naturally, you have them record cover versions of some of the biggest rock and pop hits of the last year or so. It would be an unimaginably idiotic strategy today, but it was an idiotic strategy even then, when rock criticism was in its infancy, and such a marrow-headed move would pass unnoticed. The group clearly isn't putting too much of their heart and soul into covers of smashes by the Beatles, Byrds, and Mamas & Papas, along with ludicrous selections like "Mrs. Brown You've Got a Lovely Daughter" and "Bang Bang." It's not as bad as you think -- Sal Valentino, as the cliché goes, could sing the telephone book and make it sound not half bad. But it was a commercial and artistic disaster that, even more crucially, helped put the nail in the coffin of the group's original and best incarnation.

(by Richie Unterberger, All Music Guide)