3 out of 5

Produced by: Various

Label: Jump Up! Records

A somewhat repetitive set, ‘Pressure Hop!’ is the kind of compilation where I have to question the intentions, though apparently this was a giveaway at the “SuperNova Ska Festival” (perhaps in 2017?), and has then since been used as an extra in a lot of Jump Up! Records shipments. I mean, it’s free, so there’s the usual caveat there – who am I to criticize a totally bonus, 23-song set, except I’m this totally awesome internet dweller with criticizing powers.

But back to intentions: if this is a document of the bands at the festival, fair enough, but I’d think you’d want to document that a bit more (some mention of the festival?); if this is a label comp – there’s a line on the insert that all artists are available on Jump Up! – I’d think you’d want to put best feet forwards there (or representative feet, I suppose), and the middle of this disc is a long stretch of very, very similar tunes. On the one hand, I appreciate that sequencing, putting some new wave stuff up top, then moving into old school reggae / 2-tone, then into instrumental dub / 2-tone, but classic ska is a genre kinda like punk: musically, there’s often not much difference (three chords in punk or a skanking beat in ska only goes so far), and the nuance comes in the performance, and when you boil it down to instrumentals, that becomes even more the case. So the comp is pretty stellar when you have different singers and different horn arrangements to add flavor, but starting at about the midpoint, I had a lot of trouble – with my apologies to all of these bands – figuring out much difference between the tunes, except for the one phrase that was scatted being different. And I realize that’s really dismissive, but I guess I would’ve just broken up the sequencing differently to avoid this. Swinging back around to more new-wave, ska/punk ska/rock in the last few tracks is also a much more jarring shift when happening right after the slower instrumentals.

Jump! has an incredible back catalogue of new and old artists, and I’m positive everyone featured here has something to offer listeners with keener ears than mine, but I just don’t think they’re all best served by this comp’s setup.