Backyard Tire Fire, who emerge from a fertile Midwest music scene that's introduced America to some of its greatest new rock bands over the last decade, fully embrace the best characteristics of their generation's genre-bending, influence-melding approach to creating music. Incorporating rock'n'roll, folk, pop, alt-country, Southern rock, and R&B influences, however, only serve as means to a greater end for Ed Anderson, the sublime songwriter who's the voice and vision behind BTF. On the band's third album, Vagabonds & Hooligans, Anderson goes deep into his own psyche to conjure and craft his most intriguing lyrics and gorgeous melodies yet. Strip away all the tweaked atmospherics, haunting harmonies and majestic recording techniques found in songs like "The Wrong Hand," "A Long Time," "Don't Know What To Do" and the album's title cut and what remains at the core are songs utterly singular and consistently transcendent.