This song is subtitled “Flip'n'Zip” in the lyrics booklet.
Scott Walker offered some explanation in a 2014 interview with The Quietus:
The Queitus: Can you tell me about ‘Fetish’, the least standard track on the album?
Scott Walker: It’s about fetishising objects… but it’s one of the songs I kind...
[Refrain]
Red, blade points knife the air
All night he sees it
Constellating his thought
Acne on a leper
[Verse 1]
Red, blade points disappear
Sets it's blackness, glistening
Curling and winding
Through grip mangled fingers
Bristling and glittering
No, nothing else lingers
Gleam away, little brute
Gleam away
Gleam away, little brute
Gleam away
[Verse 2]
As if after waving Capon claws over ashes
A single talon should lower- and silently plow
He carves the ghost mascot
The length of his skin
Stilettoed without interruption
The body including the face
On a bed in the dark
Without interruption
He imagines he feels it
Tugging and clinching
Hears it rustling and rising
With the naked intaglio-
Lifting free of its flesh
Silently prowling from window to window
There is no nothing else
There is no nothing else
[Verse 3]
Flip was a charmer
And so was I
Zip was a devil
And so was I
Can't afford but bescumber
Our spunk-stiffened-tresses
As we stroll in the glut
Trimmed in frilly and furs
Tell us apart
We can never die
Tell us apart
We can never die
[Verse 4]
Fluffed and the fluffer
Fluffing goodbye
Arm and arm arm and arm
In our feathers and blood
Choo-choo, choo-choo, mama
Cursing the rummy cluck
Choo-choo, choo-choo, mama
How do you lose your luck?
Choo-choo, choo-choo, mama
In the dark lopping off all interruption
How do you lose your luck?
How do you lose your luck?
[Refrain]
Red, blade points knife the air
All night he sees it
Constellating his thought
Acne on a leper
Fetish was written by Scott Walker.
Fetish was produced by Peter Walsh & Scott Walker.
Scott Walker + Sunn O))) released Fetish on Tue Oct 21 2014.