Home Counties rockers Space Elevator are back with a third full-length album, entitled Persona Non Grata – and very nice it is too.

The band are very much settled into their own skin by now, with the result being easily their most self-confident offering to date. Largely gone is the reliance on the band’s Queen and West End links (guitarist David Young, you’ll remember, played guitar in the London version of the We Will Rock You production), to be replaced by sleek, easy-on-the-ear AOR of the most sophisticated kind.

It’s also the band’s best sounding album to date, thanks to a fabulous production from Adam Vanryne that allows each instrument (and, of course, the sublime throat of the Duchess) to punch through the mix as required. This may well have been an album largely recorded to the cloud by artists in isolation; but close your eyes and you’re transported to one of the World’s great studios – The Record Plant in Sausalito, maybe, circa 1976 – such is the sumptuous soundscape your ears are treated to. It’s only early, of course, but I’ll hazard a guess that not many albums will sound better than Persona Non Grata in 2022.

But what of the songs? I hear you mumble. Well, of course, you can have the greatest sounding record in the world but it’s nothing if the music included therein sounds like nothing so much as a stereo reproduction of extreme flatulence; thankfully, this is never the case on PNG, as the band wheel out track after track of cleverly written, supremely executed rock music. After living with the album for the best part of a month I’m happy to report that there is not one weak link detectable throughout the course of the eleven tracks offered up as the band displays it’s mastery over just about every style imaginable, from the strident hard rock of Duchess of This Town and Ritchie (See You Later Baby) all the way through to the opulent Philly soul pastiche that is Love You Better.

Between these two poles you’ll also find the album’s two standouts, Passive Aggression and the quite staggering Stevie Nicks Smile, both of which deserve to be heard on the biggest stages available, not to mention the jaunty Britpop swagger of the band’s cheeky It Bites tribute Cheerful Frank; all human life is indeed to be found within the grooves of Persona Non Grata – and human life has rarely sounded this good…

And that’s without mention of the three set piece vocal extravaganzas, First Girl On The Moon, I Will Hold On To You and Reverie and Souvenirs, wherein The Duchess gives a trio of bravura, tour de force performances that quite literally need to be heard to be believed; the second pair of the three are perhaps the only points in the album where those ‘West End’ influences resurface – Elaine Page would have killed to sing I Will Hold On To You in 1978 – but that dong also contains a note hit by our heroine that is absolutely spine tingling – and possibly worth the price of admission on it’s own…

It’s not all about the voice here, and Young impresses consistently with his six string contributions; rhythm section Brian Green and Chas Maguire provide the solid bedrock that allows the songs to take flight, whilst keyboardist Michael Bramwell adds the flourishes that complete what is, in the final washup, a pretty impressive picture.

Great stuff, then, from a band that has always promised much without quite hitting the bullseye. That changes now, with the release of Persona Non Grata; After all, as the great Jim Bowen never tired of reminding us – you can’t beat a bit of bully…

Persona Non Grata releases on February 25th on the band’s own label in the UK and through On Stage Records for Europe and the Rest of the World.