***A Rock Unsteady is the sophomore album from Toronto musician and vocalist Victoria Cheong aka New Chance. As an active collaborator in the city’s avant music and contemporary dance scenes, as well as a practicing astrologer, Cheong brings a wide array of influences to her mesmeric solo work. This new album combines spiritual strains of downtempo, dub, house and electronic pop, all underpinning a greater symbolic framework. Through subtle integration of dramatic idioms, the album hangs together as a narrative about power and understanding–and just how slippery those two things can be. As its title suggests,A Rock Unsteady is an album made for this very stark moment of collective uncertainty, balancing equal parts precarity and potential.Lead single ‘Oh Mercury’ plunges the listener into the album’s vivid universe. Opening with a dulcet verse of lyre and vocals, the tide soon shifts and the song drops into a lysergic reimagining of 90s dancehall. One of the central features of the song, and a crucial force throughout the album, is a vocal chorus featuring Isla Craig, Robin Dann and Felicity Williams (Bernice, Bahamas). In tandem with Cheong, they help sing out a keystone tension of the album: “Because the heart / can’t read the head / And because the soul / can’t read the circumstances.”Features appearances from Johnny Spence (The Weather Station, Jeremy Dutcher), Evan Cartwright (Cola, U.S. Girls), Brodie West (Eucalyptus) and Jennifer Castle.
LP $21.95
05/23/2025