New Chance

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.

A Rock Unsteady is elucidated by a shining cast of players from Cheong’s community: Johnny Spence (The Weather Station, Jeremy Dutcher) contributes keys, drummer Evan Cartwright (Cola, U.S. Girls) lends his rhythms, Brodie West (Eucalyptus) sits in on saxophone and Jennifer Castle guests with some unusually abstract twang. This marks the first time that Cheong has pulled collaborators so deeply into the New Chance orbit. As her ambitions expand and the project evolves, New Chance becomes more crystalline. A Rock Unsteady is a gem of club-adjacent poetry that refracts the many-layered nature of our living.