The years leading up to SOME SMALL FORTUNE were a time of immense change and reflection for multi-instrumentalist Liam Shortall, aka corto.alto. Earning a Mercury Prize nomination for his frenetic, jazz-influenced 2023 debut album Bad with Names, Shortall embarked on a world tour just as his family home back in Glasgow was being sold. “When my mum and dad put the place on sale, we went through all our family photos and it brought up so many memories,” he tells Apple Music. “It became this process of being nostalgic and grateful for those times, as well as rediscovering aspects I no longer remembered.” Inspired by this emotional pull to the past as well as questioning the unreliability of memory, Shortall holed up in his Glasgow studio and began writing his most expansive and personal music to date. From the heavily distorted bass funk of “TEMPLE” to the orchestral strings on “YURA,” the emphatic alternative hip-hop sound of “WHODIS,” and breakbeat strings of “THIEF,” SOME SMALL FORTUNE sees Shortall at his most musically masterful as well as playfully introspective. “The title is a dedication to ultimately be grateful for your life and how fortunate you’ve been,” he says. “I certainly have had my fair share and hopefully this record can inspire that same sense of energy and joy.” Read on for corto.alto’s in-depth thoughts on the album, track by track. “SOME SMALL FORTUNE” “It took a lifetime to make Bad with Names since it was my first record and I could hone in on every single beat. That album opens with a string intro, and I love how it sets up the rest of the record to come. I decided to mirror Bad with Names by having a strings intro here played by the same string quartet, although this time it’s tonally darker. I love writing for strings because my main gig before I started corto.alto was arranging horns and strings for people’s records. They have such a beautiful color palette.” “THIEF” “This song is about the unreliability of my memory and the thief of the song title is your past self stealing memories from your current self. The chords in the strings intro are chords I’ve been sitting on for ages, I was looping them in the studio one day and it eventually developed into ‘THIEF.’ I wanted this as the first full track as it’s a mashup of things I love but haven’t done before, like riffs, breakbeats, and heavy distorted saxophones.” “APRIL” (feat. anaiis) “I worked on a remix for an artist called Mackwood with anaiis previously and we collaborated so well together that I wanted to write something for her from then. This was one of the hardest tracks to piece together because she has such delicate vocals that I wanted to balance with busy drums. It’s been a massive learning curve for me to be so involved in songwriting on this album. With this track, I was sending it to my producer friends and they kept telling me to delete instrumentation! I’m really proud of how it turned out.” “TEMPLE” “On most of my albums there’s always a goofy instrumental. The groove on this one reminds me of an indie band like Wet Leg. I always wanted to make a crossover track with that energy and it’s all about not taking yourself and your music too seriously. It’s fun to connect to your inner child and the music I used to write when I was studying. It’s got loads of random elements in it you wouldn’t expect.” “GO” (with Vector) “I’d had this Brazilian baile funk beat and bassline for ages but I was trying to find the right feature for it and wasn’t having any luck. For this album, though, I got in touch with Vector through a mutual friend and, 24 hours later, he sent me everything back and it was perfect. Vector is from Nigeria, I’m from Scotland, and the groove is Brazilian so I love how new it feels. I went to Lagos to shoot the music video with him, and it was incredible to see how much of a big star he is but also how he takes time for everyone.” “NOTHING” (with Eriff) “When I used to arrange for horns and strings, I wrote for a band called VanIves. Their singer Stuart has an amazing voice and I’ve always wanted to make something with him, especially since he’s based in Glasgow, and I’m so glad we managed it here. We’re both massive fans of folk songwriters like Bon Iver and Dove Ellis and the vocal has that Bon Iver treatment but the song otherwise has been the hardest thing I’ve written on bass, since it’s really intricate and difficult. Thankfully it turned out really well.” “DON’T LISTEN” “I wrote this one two years ago, which makes it the oldest song on the record. I wasn’t sure if it would make it onto the album in case I’d strayed too far from that sound now but I think it works really well. It’s a protest song against following other people’s success and reminding myself not to listen to that but to do my own thing. It has a hectic, childish nature to it.” “PRAYED WE WOULD” (with Oscar Jerome) “I’ve long been such a fan of Oscar’s music, he’s so unique and has his own sound vocally and on the guitar. I didn’t want to shoehorn the collaboration, though, so we went into the studio together to write and ultimately came out with this song, which all happened in a single day. It has one of the only real improvised jazz solos on the record, played on the piano by Fergus McCreadie.” “PAPER” “I wanted to explore a lot of different styles on this album, as well as trying to collaborate with a lot of features. The tracks between the features are when you can experiment and make the album make sense. ‘PAPER’ is one of those songs, exploring Afrobeat and using strings in a more orchestrated and melodic style.” “WHODIS” (with Mick Jenkins) “When I was making a list of album features, Mick was in the unattainable dream category. We tried him and he said he was up for it, but after I sent over a bunch of tracks, he didn’t feel like any of it was working. Instead, I decided to become really intentional with what I was writing for him through resampling a lot of my old sessions and, after two days, the track was done and he really liked it. It was about not rushing but waiting for the right thing.” “YURA” “I wasn’t sure if this one would be on the album as it’s quite an ‘interlude’ number but I asked Johnny Woodham to go really angry on it on the trumpet and that really made it. It’s the last instrumental track on the album before it begins to ramp up for the end.” “OMNI” “Terra Kin is an artist from Glasgow and we’ve been friends and collaborators for 10 years. She’s so talented and has been a massive help to me creatively on the album. ‘OMNI’ is one of my favorites, and we wrote it in one day and recorded it then and there. I used a lot of acoustic instruments and guitars on this track, which makes it feel new and warm. It’s a song rather than jazz bullshit!” “IJUSTIDONTKNOW” “This track is meant to bookend the record with ‘THIEF,’ as they’re both really hard-riffing tracks about the unreliability of memory. It was recorded on a baritone guitar with a rocky drum groove and a sax melody based on one rhythmic note. I really like this curveball track to have towards the end.” “SOMETHING” (feat. BINA.) “I met BINA. at the AIM [Association of Independent Music] Awards and we got chatting about doing something together. I sent a few ideas to her but it was similar to Mick where there wasn’t anything instantaneous that jumped out. We ended up getting together and, in six hours, we wrote, recorded, and produced it. BINA. has so much momentum in the way she makes music by always moving forwards rather than getting bogged down in details. It was a pure flow state and such an inspiring day.” “NOBLEHILL” (feat. Jacob Alon) “I’ve been such a fan of Jacob’s music since day one and we became friends through both living in Glasgow. I didn’t want to shoehorn people into genres they’re uncomfortable with but I wanted to make something that was interesting for both of us and not too predictable. It took so long to make, but we got in the studio to make sure every part was totally right, and it was scary letting it go as it’s been through so many iterations. It was a really deep song to collaborate on: Noblehill was where I grew up in Dumfries and we got talking about family and not being able to go back to see the family house one last time before it was sold. It’s a full-circle moment to end the album on.”