Rustbelt AKA: John Chiaverina, formerly known as Juiceboxxx, has shared a brand new single entitled “Oh My God Here It Comes Now,” on which he documented both the absurdity of aiming for greatness as well as the beauty of trying anyway. Today, Rustbelt returns with the announcement of a new EP, You Got Nowhere To Go But You’re Going There Tonight, which drops on January 19, 2024 via Dangerbird Records.

Rustbelt’s John Chiaverina knows about endurance, and his new EP, You Got Nowhere To Go But You’re Going There Tonight, deals with the variety of perspectives he’s experienced along the way.

“All your hopes and all your dreams / they never really die,” Chiaverina sings on the title track. He’s been working on the song for over 10 years, which means it’s been sitting on his hard drive as he continued to write and perform as Juiceboxxx, but this song kept pulling him back in somehow. “With Rustbelt, I’m trying to give myself room to move outside of my narrative a tiny bit,” he says. “These songs are like alternate timelines for myself.”

In some songs, he’s looking back at his life, and in others, like, “Oh My God Here It Comes Now,” he’s imagining a different version of it, one outside of the complexities of big city ambition. “I wanna live by the airport / I wanna watch the planes go by,” Chiaverina sings, and you can almost feel the weight of his desires falling off him. He continues, “It’s been a life caked in failure / I’ve seen enough dreams up and die.” Rustbelt documents both the absurdity of aiming for greatness as well as the beauty of trying anyway.

Chiaverina says listening to rap music while growing up in the Midwest introduced a theme of dissonance that’s played itself out in his music ever since—rap was about flaunting ambition, while the Midwest underground scene he came up in was skeptical of it. He says that his lyrical world in Juiceboxxx was more about creating an “amplified, funhouse mirror version” of his life, while Rustbelt lyrics make more room for narrative freedom.

Each Rustbelt song begins on Chiaverina’s computer before getting reverse engineered with a band, this time in Chicago. Willy Dintenfass, a collaborator of Chiaverina’s for over 20 years, plays bass and guitar. Dan Didier from The Promise Ring plays drums, Jeff Graupner from The Hecks contributes piano and synth. Lily Konigsberg of Palberta sings backup vocals on “Runnin’ Thru The Rave.”

Rustbelt
You Got Nowhere To Go But You’re Going There Tonight EP
Tracklisting

01. You Got Nowhere To Go But You’re Going There Tonight
02. Oh My God Here It Comes Now
03. Gimme A Sign
04. Running Thru The Rave

Order You Got Nowhere To Go But You’re Going There Tonight HERE