Top Shortage – Susan Stryker (Divine Schism)
Ahead of the forthcoming release of their debut EP on Oxford label Divine Schism post punk band Top Shortage has shared lead single Susan Stryker.
Artist: Top Shortage
Track: Susan Stryker
Label: Divine Schism
Release date: 14 February 2026
Find it: Bandcamp
Oxford label Divine Schism say Top Shortage have already become ‘the biggest band in Oxford without releasing anything’ but with Susan Stryker they’re making the second part of that claim obsolete while firmly cementing the first part.
With chiming guitar lines tripping over each other playfully there’s an urgency, a pleading in the vocal, but when it slips to half time in the middle 8 it feels like the drawing together of the intellectualising and emotion of experience only to have it all released in wild yelps as we draw to a close.
Sharing the track on social media the band said, “The lyrics were adapted with permission from an excerpt of transfeminist theorist Susan Stryker’s 1994 essay My Words to Victor Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamonix.”
‘The Nature – you harass me with – is a lie. / Do not trust it to protect you from what I represent!’
Linking Frankenstein’s monster and the transexual body Stryker’s retelling is a call to recognise not all emotions are private, that you are an expert in your own experience and can claim your rage, your anger, your joy and all feeling as part of that experience. It is a reclamation, an acceptance, and a challenge.
As a first statement Susan Stryker mirrors the themes of the essay openly and subtly. It is bold, intimate and vulnerable yet defiant and challenging too. It opens the way for what promises to be a must-listen debut EP.
Susan Stryker by Top Shortage is out digitally now. Proceeds from the single will go to Five By Five, which pools money and gives it directly to trans women’s charities. EP Contre Nature is set for release on 13 March 2026 via Divine Schism.
Find Top Shortage: Bandcamp | Instagram
Live dates:
- 13 March – The Nest, Oxford
Read Susan Stryker’s essay My Words to Victor Frankenstein Above The Village of Chamonix (opens a PDF)
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Sarah Lay
A long-standing music journalist she's also co-founder of independent record label Reckless Yes, an author of novels, and when not messing around with words and music, a digital strategist.
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