Léna Bartels made a terrific debut album, Preservation, in 2022. Now, after a split release with regular collaborator Nico Hedley (It’s Gonna Be a Wonderful New Year, released in February), she’s back with a new full-length album. It’s not a surprising departure or change of pace for the Brooklyn-via-Portland singer/songwriter; it does, however, build on that excellent debut.
Many of the same musicians appear on Bartels’ new record, The Brightest Silver Fish, particularly the core trio of Izzy Oram Brown on guitar, Micah Prussack (Youbet) on bass, and Andrew Emge (The Big Net) on drums (Bartels plays mostly guitar and keyboards). The songs are uniformly stellar, but the arrangements are also crucial, mainly because they contain a surprising amount of…

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