Chris Crofton - Hello It's Me [CD]

The wistful, depressively whimsical “UFO Hunters,” the barroom-ready waltz “Find Me in the Bar,” and the lonely country weeper “Numbers Game” glimmer with an open, Laurel Canyon-ready resplendence that makes them sound at home alongside the ’70s, AM-radio-gold, countrypolitan story songs of Neil Diamond and John Denver - staples that the singer fondly remembers listening to on car rides with mom as a kid. “That music is burned on my brain,” he says. “It still takes me to a very wide-eyed place.