In All Good Hope, the forthcoming debut album from singer, songwriter, and musician José Lobo, is a masterclass in intimacy. From the highly personal lyrical themes and sparse, delicate instrumentation, to the singing, which sounds like a friend whispering a secret into your ear, the experience of listening to In All Good Hope is akin to entering an inner sanctum, or what Lobo aptly refers to as “a reverie of the quotidian.” Originally hailing from Venezuela, Lobo has spent the better part of the last decade in a somewhat nomadic mode, splitting his time between his current homebase of Montreal, San Francisco’s Mission District, Paris, and also Hamilton, Ontario, where much of the album was recorded.

The title of his new single, “TBTBNM,” is a phrase he said a lot as a reply when someone asked him how he was doing, which literally translates to “All good, all good, nothing bad” from “todo bien todo bien nada mal.” It’s one of those phrases where depending where the comma is placed or the way that it is said, it can mean “Just pushing through” or “I’m thriving.” The lyrics really speak to those two corners of Lobo‘s emotional landscape.

1. Tell us the story of this song, why did you choose to visualize this song specifically? 
This song came to be during the winter of 2021 when I was feeling a little stuck in my reality and started making songs to have solo dance parties in my room when I was feeling tired of constantly diving into introspection. Honestly I failed regarding this considering the lyrics to this song are actually layered in reflections and in that way the song musically feels tropical and lyrically and visually are bucolic which is actually a sincere representation of how I tend to feel now that I think about it. When the song was ready I knew it would be one of the singles for the album and Fernando, the director thought it would be a good idea to make a video that does not necessarily aligns immediately with the energy of the song and I agreed with him and considering the song was created during the winter we both felt it was appropriate to also let the visuals assemble what winter urban exploring would look like for us.

2.What was the inspiration behind this video (visuals, storyline, etc.)?   

The inspiration for the video was really to document our trip to New York this past winter and with the super8 to dive further into that realm of nostalgia and to document everything as if “ the New York of today was like the one from yesterday, laying there timeless but in movement” says Fernando. For the visuals it came to be that the palette was influenced by the tones of urban industrial areas and there are also shots of us around the metro, just browsing around record shops, etc. There are also references to nyc shows (friends, Seinfeld) and although it was not planned, this now makes it feel as though yes the video had to be in New York.

3.What was the process of making this video?

The process was quite laid back, we just decided to record as much footage as possible and to let the places we were going guide us in a way. For example there is this shot where I am standing atop a pile of construction debris in this empty lot and really this location sort of made the video, we have this shot with the brick wall behind, this one where I am looking towards the Manhattan skyline and one where I clumsily run down the mountain of construction debris! All of this took place within this empty lot and to even get in there you had to go through this wooden sort of fence with nails sticking out and then once we shot everything around the lot, a drone started flying over us and we ran frantically towards the exit thinking a drone flying over us at the empty lot was a little too close to a black mirror episode haha. Now that I think about it, it’s funny because the song has this air of irreverence when it comes to finding oneself in movement and saying “who is gonna tell me that I can’t leave?!” And well that drone definitely told us we had to leave …