The name of the band is Slinky Vagabond. The new album is The Eternal Return.
The band's name comes from a line in David Bowie's song "Young Americans": "Scanning life through the picture window/She finds the slinky vagabond." Listening to The Eternal Return, released Jan. 14, 2025, you cannot help but think about Bowie.
Slinky Vagabond is an augmented duo, consisting of New York-based musician, designer, and fashion author and academic Keanan Duffty, owner of what is likely the most misspelled easy-to-say name in the English language. His partner in the band is Florence, Italy-based guitarist, producer, and musician Fabio Fabbri, unlikely to be mispronounced in Italian. Duffty sings; Fabbri plays everything else except drums, which feature Christian Dryden. (There are exceptions on certain tracks.)
The Eternal Return is not a tribute to Bowie, except when it is: The song "Ad Astra," the Latin phrase from Virgil's Aeneid, meaning "to the stars." (The Kansas state motto is Ad astra per aspera, "to the stars through difficulties"). It is not inspired by the movie of that name starring Brad Pitt seeking his father (played by Tommy Lee Jones) lost in space.
The sequencing of The Eternal Return has the rises and falls of a Bowie concept album, almost with two sides, like a vinyl LP. The opening track, "Lady Bump Discoteque" features longtime backup singer and sometimes companion back-in-the-day, Ava Cherry. The farewell "End of the Show" is co-written by Earl Slick, Bowie's preeminent guitarist in the mid-1970s, having replaced the eminent Mick Ronson. There is also a song called "Earthman Go Home," which takes Bowie's interstellar enthusiasms into a dystopian yet humorous frame. Earthlings are always worried about whether we will like the aliens who visit us; we never think about how when we visit, they might not like us. And for good reason.
Slinky Vagabond, The Eternal Return, album cover.
It's not quite an homage, nor is, stars forfend, a simulation of Bowie, though there are elements of all of that. I decided it was a "replication" of a "David Bowie" album, in its storytelling, sequencing, and sound.
I ran this tag by Duffty during a felicitous Zoom call, because I really like this record, and I like Duffty – talking to him makes you understand why he is an excellent collaborator – so I wanted to make sure "replication" did not appear too negative.
"I'll give you a word: 'derivative'," he laughed, the kind of self-deprecation that dotted our conversation. When I suggested "replicant," Duffty was delighted.
"'Replicant' is a very is a very apropos word," he said. "I very much wear my influences on my sleeve. I would feel myself incredibly lucky if someone said there's a Bowie flavor to it, because David was such a singular talent, and for anybody to be anywhere close to anything like anything he's ever done . . . that's a tremendous compliment."
"I don't shy away from that. And actually we've got a track called 'Ad Astra' that Mike Garson is playing on, and the lyrics of that are really about David. "When a legend dies, even androids cry." The reference evokes Blade Runner and the Philip K. Dick story on which it is based. Keyboard player Garson was one of Bowie's longest-lasting band members.
Glen Matlock, forever chained to "formerly of the Sex Pistols" even 50 years later, wrote "Perfect World" with Duffty, adapted from an early (circa 2007) version of the Slinkys in which Matlock and Slick performed. (There’s also "Strange World," with a video, below).
If you are wondering why you haven't heard Slinky Vagabond, neither has most of the planet. Earth, that is. When I first checked Spotify about 10 days ago, they had 13 monthly listeners. In the world. When I followed them, I was the 24th. As of this writing, it's all the way up to 49. You can't say some multinational corporation is trying to shove Slinky Vagabond up your ears. It would be inappropriate to say, "don't believe the hype," because there is no hype.
But The Eternal Return is a fascinating record, especially for Bowie fans and admirers, more fluid and carefully sequenced than the Vags' solid rock album released in 2021, King Boy Vandals.
If Duffty sounds a little like an overgrown fanboy, well, there's a teeny bit of that too. He was part of a band that played three Bowie songs at the David Bowie World Fan Convention in Liverpool in 2024. Chalk up Duffty's awe to having grown up in Doncaster, a small former coal mining town in northern England not far from Leeds or Sheffield.
"As a kid, I kind of came of age during the glam rock era. I liked Bowie but I only had a few of the singles. I was also buying singles by Mark Bolan, and the Sweet, and Slade. I loved the way they all looked. You know they looked so otherworldly."
There was also the visual style influence of films like A Clockwork Orange, and Ken Russell's exuberantly mad version of The Who's Tommy. Glam style segued into punk, and Duffty was all in.
"Suddenly you could get on your mom's sewing machine," he said. "And sort of trash your own clothes, and turn your flares into drainpipe, skinny jeans, and paint on your shirt, and wear your school tie cut off, or whatever. And suddenly you could do that and walk around in the daytime with that look. Whereas, before, trying to emulate Elton John in Tommy, you couldn't do that, certainly not in my town. You'd just get beaten up, you know. But punk kind of kicked those doors down, and suddenly you could wear those expressive clothes in the daytime. In my town you still got beaten up, but there were suddenly loads of kids doing the same thing. And that stayed with me my whole life. I mean that love of a signature style has really informed everything that I do, music and fashion, living together, as these sort of bedfellows." It was a good preparation for Duffty the designer dressing the Sex Pistols for their 2003 reunion tour.
Coming from Doncaster was helpful in one important way: David Bowie's father was from Doncaster. This identification became useful as an ice-breaker when Duffty first met with Bowie to collaborate on a fashion project together: a collection for Target stores in the US.
Self-effacing but never timid, Dufftey got himself a Target deal, then called Bill Zysblat, longtime Bowie business manager, who Wired magazine called "Bowie's Brain" in a 1998 profile. Zysblat set up a meeting for Bowie and Dufftey, and they hit it off. It went so well that Duffty draws a distinction between David Bowie, the rock star of which he was in awe, and his given name, David Jones, a regular kind of guy whose dad had grown up in Doncaster. His meetings, he said, were with David Jones.
"I would design each of these collections, and then meet with David regularly to review everything. And he was very clear that, you know he didn't want to be seen as trying to be a designer. And at first he was unsure about what this should be called. I suggested to him it should be 'Bowie by Keanan Duffty.' And David was very generous, and when I showed him the original labeling designs, he said to me, 'oh, you should make your name bigger.' And I said to him, Well, people will buy it because of you. And he said, 'yeah, but always make your name as big as you can.'"
The line launched in Target stores across the U.S. in October, 2007. "We did a tuxedo for $99. We did a lot of button up shirts. We did some ties. We did a trench coat, a puffer. A sleeveless vest." Duffty went to visit Target stores in Queens and Brooklyn, where he was pleased with the signage, promotion, and marketing. I'm not sure how I missed the $99 tuxedo, but it serves me right for never wandering beyond the socks, shorts, and underwear in the Target men's department.
There are Bowie songs – "Fashion" – for one, and Slinky Vagabond's "Strange World," which mock the self-absorption of what Ray Davies called in one early Kinks' song, the "Dedicated Follower of Fashion."
Duffty, a fashion designer and creative director for major brands (Aveda, Dr. Martens, John Varvatos, Gwen Stefani and others), is also a part-time lecturer at the USC Jimmy Iovine/Andre Young Academy. He has been Dean of Fashion at Istituto Marangoni Miami, and Director of Fashion Programs at Parsons School of Design, where he started the Master’s Professional Studies (MPS) in Fashion Management.
He is also the author of books including The Fashion Entrepreneur: The Definitive Guide to Building Your Brand (Laurence King Publishing 2024). Yet he doesn't like the term "fashion," preferring the idea of "style."
"I didn't really like, and I still don't really like 'fashion' per se, because fashion is what people follow, whereas style is what people have. And I always thought, musicians have style. We're living in an era now, obviously, where a lot of musicians use stylists or collaborate with fashion companies in order to provide a revenue stream. But you know, I sort of like these different facets of creative expression. And I try to encourage students to to look at their creative expression in the same way. Because it's all part of the same thing whether you're making a sound, or whether you're making a look or whatever you're doing, it's all part of the same tapestry. And you know, I love that."
So it is with Slinky Vagabond: Come for the music, stay for the style. Just like a starman of our acquaintance.
This article originally appeared in Wayne Robins’ Substack and is used here by permission. Wayne’s Words columnist Wayne Robins teaches at St. John’s University in Queens, New York, and writes the Critical Conditions Substack:
https://waynerobins.substack.com/.
Header image courtesy of Keanan Duffty and Fabio Fabbri courtesy of Jayme Thornton.
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