Following 2003's Kite vs. Obelisk, San Francisco's Ral Partha Vogelbacher return with a third album, Shrill Falcons. Ral Partha Vogelbacher are a “they,” not a “he”: frontman and founder Chadwick Bidwell is once again joined by friends and collaborators Thee More Shallows. (The moniker Ral Partha Vogelbacher is a marriage of a company that makes lead figurines for Dungeons & Dragons, and Pierre Vogelbacher, a childhood friend and tormentor of Bidwell's.) Tearing up the usual template, this time around Bidwell wrote the lyrics (he provides almost all the vocals on the record) and gave them to Thee More Shallows’ Dee Kesler who composed most of the music.

Musically more hi-fi and lyrically less oblique than both Kite vs. Obelisk and 2001's self-released The More Nice Fey Elven Gnomes Are Hiding In My Toilet Again, Shrill Falcons uses a vibrant palette of musical instruments, electronic drones and fuzz guitar to create a rich, multi-hued album of very personal and very memorable songs about loss, family, friendship, feedback and sturgeon. With dusted atmospherics reminiscent of Bill Callaghan's Smog and a dense yet dexterous lyricism akin to Dan Bejar's Destroyer, Shrill Falcons is thematically a weightier album than the previous two. Where they were both largely fantasy- and/or imagination-driven (elves; knights; historic battles; tales of olde) this time inspiration is rooted in bleaker reality – the album is concerned chiefly with the death of Bidwell's father a few years ago.

All sounds were played by Thee More Shallows and Chadwick Bidwell, besides where Anticon artist Odd Nosdam creates a dreamscape in the middle of “New Happy Fawn.”