Pop music has always loved a haunted house, but few artists bother to furnish the rooms. Aurealis does. "Cursed" arrives not as a single but as a séance, summoning every doubt you've ever swallowed and handing it a microphone.

Some men spend a lifetime treading boards before they learn to set fire to one. Diogo Lima, the Portuguese actor turned anthem-builder behind Dean RÖK, has clearly absorbed every lesson the stage ever taught him about timing, restraint, and the art of the grand gesture — and on "Fire & Stars" he cashes the whole lot in at once.

Oldham has given us many things, but rarely has it given us a band quite so determined to sound like four decades of post-punk and stadium-rock distilled into a single, sweaty rehearsal room — and rarely has the gamble paid off so handsomely. Mercy Kelly, once a five-piece, have shed two members and emerged leaner, hungrier, and considerably more thrilling for it. *Summer of Silence* is the sound of a band finding exactly the shape it was always meant to be in.