TITUS BANK
BIOGRAPHY
Titus Bank has a voice that can stop an audience in its tracks. The Vancouver-based pop adventurer can effortlessly shift from a smooth croon to a soulful vibrato to a note-perfect howl — arresting and inviting; confident yet vulnerable.
He is now is entering the next phase of an already-prolific music career with the unveiling of “I Do Yeah,” the first seismic single from his forthcoming debut solo album. While Titus previously made waves with his ambitious, song-a-day 365 Songwriting Challenge (during which he wrote, recorded and released 185 in the span of a year), “I Do Yeah” is the result of a shifting focus towards songwriting refinement over sheer quantity. Letting his ideas marinate across multiple writing sessions with Toronto pop quartet Valley, the piece organically evolved from a sea breeze acoustic sway towards an incandescent swirl of synths, tasteful, tremolo-and-fuzz dusted licks, punctuated by Titus’ rafters-reaching vocal glide. After months of sitting with the tune’s original theme of proving yourself to life’s many doubters, the epiphany of a new bridge had Titus reconsidering one’s resilience, independence, and drive.
“When we initially wrote it, the idea was about trying to better yourself as a person, and proving wrong everyone who doubts you,” he says, while adding of the fleshed-out narrative, “but when we wrote the bridge, it also became about letting go of expectations to be this perfect person. It’s a tug-of-war between self-betterment and letting go of social pressure.”
“I love the evolution of songs throughout the production process,” he suggests of songwriting. “’I Do Yeah’ started on an acoustic guitar, but now it’s this huge bop. I would never have guessed when I played it for the first time that it would end up having such a banger chorus.”
Early on in “I Do Yeah,” Valley’s Rob Laska offers up a comically drawled-out, “C’mon baby, step up your game”. It’s a studio quip accidentally caught on tape—a light-hearted ribbing while Titus was locking into the groove of an acoustic guitar lick—but stands as a solid M.O. for an artist now comfortably finding his footing in the pop world, even while adjusting on the fly.
As Titus Bank now begins rolling out new music, it’s fair to assume that anything can happen next. Titus wouldn’t have it any other way.