EP or mini album? My money would be on extended EP, but the way music’s distributed and consumed these days, it’s a moot point. Anyhow, Afton Wolfe has pulled together five songs, four of which have been released previously in a digital format and one new piece, ‘Cry’, which was written in response to a close friend’s personal tragedy.

Afton Wolfe is one of those rare artists that sound equally at home in three musical styles with similar roots; blues, soul and country and ‘Twenty-Three’ has references to all of these styles across its five tracks. And you couldn’t truly represent without having a triple-time song; ‘The Moon Is Going Down’ is a slow waltz with a very sparse arrangement and some lovely sax fills underpinning a gravelly vocal. The piano part of ‘Truck Drivin’ Man’ hints at The Doors with a densely-packed arrangement and a counterpoint lead vocal late in the song, while ‘So Purple’ is driven along by a deep bass guitar creating a Southern groove as Afton tells a story of incompatibility using imagery from mixing coloured lights or pigments – red and blue are almost at opposite ends of the spectrum (cold and warm), but they combine to create purple, and who wouldn’t want to be purple? ‘Late Nite Radio’ has a slow country feel with several tempo changes (up and down) to represent the progress of the journey and the busy finale, going out on a lonesome saxophone.

‘Cry’, which is the only entirely new song featured here, is a tour de force. The song is in the classic Stax/Atlantic Southern soul style (you can imagine Otis Redding or Bill Withers wrapping their vocal cords around this one). It’s a powerful slow soul ballad punctuated by Stax-style brass that allows Afton to demonstrate a powerful raw vocal delivery that conveys a sense a deeply felt sense of loss. It’s classic old soul.

The five songs on ‘Twenty-Three’ (I’m not getting into the mystical stuff around the title) are a great demonstration of the breadth of Afton Wolfe’s songwriting and vocal talents. You should give it a listen, and while you’re at it, check out his debut from two years ago, ‘Kings for Sale’. While you’re here, have a look at the video for the incredibly evocative ‘Late Nite Radio’: