How can you justify Mezzanine as their breakthrough album? What about the wide popular appeal and critical success of Blue Lines and Protection before it?
I was genuinely surprised When they did something is cool is this chose to do it with Mezzanine, Blue Lines is probably one of the best albums ever written in my not very humble opinion. That was truly groundbreaking.
It depends on which part of the world you're from. I'd have thought that anyone from the UK would be saying Blue Lines.
Being a foreign student in the UK during the 90s I loved the whole trip hop movement (Portishead & Tricky included) and I have to add my vote for Blue Lines and Protection. They might think that Mezzanine is their best album, but I beg to differ (along with many others).
Mezzanine is the only album of theirs I could identify by sight/sound/name. Seems like a reasonable assertion to me.
Presumably because Mezzanine was thir first album to chart number 1
I think it charted at number 1... because they had already broken through with the previous albums, so enough people knew about it and were anticipating it.