From the city that gave us generations of swagger, noise and beautiful musical troublemakers arrives another band apparently allergic to playing it safe. Enter The Sick Fix – four teenagers with enough volume, attitude and beautifully reckless ambition to remind you that guitar music doesn’t need saving; it just needs bands prepared to make it dangerous again.

Their debut double A-side Shoe Shopping / Liquid Gold lands like a boot through a venue window.

Every few years a young guitar band appears that reminds everyone why people fell in love with this stuff in the first place.

Not because they reinvent music. Not because they’ve got the biggest budget, the slickest campaign or the neatest aesthetic. But because they sound like they genuinely mean it.

Manchester four-piece The Sick Fix arrive carrying exactly that sort of energy.

Their debut double A-side Shoe Shopping / Liquid Gold doesn’t feel like the launch of another hopeful indie band. It feels like a warning shot. A loud, sweaty, occasionally chaotic declaration that there are still young bands out there willing to make noise, make mistakes and make people feel something.

And frankly – thank God.

At a time where so much modern guitar music can feel polished into submission, The Sick Fix sound thrillingly unfinished in all the right ways. You get the sense these songs could burst into flames at any moment. That tension gives the record its pulse.

Shoe Shopping arrives first and immediately reveals there’s more going on here than youthful volume and good hair.

Built around wiry, jangling guitars and a huge chorus that feels born for packed-out basement venues rather than playlists, the track turns ordinary observations into something strangely cinematic. There’s a distinctly Northern character running through it — late-night city life, overlooked moments, humour wrapped around frustration.

Leo Mitchell’s vocal performance is the key.

There’s swagger in there, obviously – shades of early Libertines frontmen throwing themselves into lines half a second before they disappear — but there’s also something sharper underneath. He sounds less interested in posing and more interested in documenting. It gives Shoe Shopping an emotional weight that sneaks up on you.

Then Liquid Gold arrives and all subtlety gets launched directly into the crowd.

This thing absolutely flies.

Fast, frantic and vibrating with teenage restlessness, it sounds like somebody bottled the final twenty minutes of a gig where everyone’s forgotten work tomorrow exists. Ted Wright’s drums never stop moving, Ollie Jaques’ bass drives everything forward with barely controlled momentum and the guitars slash across the mix like they’re trying to escape it.

And crucially – it never feels manufactured.

Producer George Brown deserves huge credit here. Lesser producers would’ve cleaned this up, tightened it, made it safer. Instead, the record feels wonderfully human. Beer-in-the-air human.

You can hear echoes of The Clash, The Jam, Small Faces and modern chaos merchants The Chats, but The Sick Fix never disappear inside those references. They’re pulling from the right places while still sounding completely like themselves — scruffy, loud, funny and occasionally on the edge of losing control.

Which is exactly where rock and roll should live.

Most debut releases introduce a band.

Shoe Shopping / Liquid Gold announces one.

The Sick Fix don’t sound like they want to join the current guitar scene.

They sound like they want to start a nice problem to have in our lives.

And based on these two tracks, that sounds like a very good idea indeed.

★★★★★