Portishead's Machine Gun... not bad

I may be all late to this, but Portishead’s new single, the aptly- titled Machine Gun, available for online listening. It’s been about a decade since we last got original tunes from Beth Gibbons, Adrian Utley and Geoff Barrows (of whom my street in Allston is named), and I have to say: This is pretty cool.

I love how steady the beat is, and the build-up is pretty intense without overdoing it. There are some awkward lyrical moments, and Beth’s delivery is as haunting as ever. It took a second listen or three to wrap my head around the climactic synth stream at the end, but overall this is a real promising sign.

I was one of those people in the ‘90s who felt Portishead were doing shit on a completely different level (their show at the Hammerstein in NYC around ’98 is still in my top performances of all time list), and after ten years they still have that mystique. This sounds like Portishead, but with an evolved aura. I expected the new stuff to be a bit more abrasive than ‘Dummy’ or the hit-or-miss self-titled, and I’m psyched I haven’t been let down. When was the last time you waited a decade for new music from a band or collaborators, and was NOT disappointed? The album arrives April 29, btw.