Machine Gun is a track off of Portishead's most recent album, Third, which came out about two months ago. I've listened to this album about two or three times a week since it came out and I'm still a little unsure about how good it actually is... As you may or may not know, this album marks the band's return from a decade long hiatus. So expectations were pretty high to say the least. I can say I was pretty satisfied with the album after the first couple of listen throughs. Third sounds like a Portishead album, it reminds me of why I liked Dummy and the self titled album back in the day. What this album doesn't do is give me reason to start liking Portishead all over again.
There are a couple of tracks on this album that I do like quite a bit but the entire track list really just... melts into one long Portishead song. Most of the songs are unremarkable and run into each other. My biggest complain about Portishead has always been the vocals. At times I really like Beth Gibbons' style, while other times I'd rather just hit stop and listen to something else. If I had to describe the vocals to someone who hasn't heard Portishead before, I'd say they sound like Björk if she were British, and may more chill.
Despite all of this, I do really like the track Machine Gun off of Third. It's not revolutionary song writing, it's just worth a listen. Listen for yourself, below is Machine Gun performed live on Jools Holland and a link to Third on Rapidshare.