Jarvis’ liner notes to The Complete Peel Sessions (2006) include some great details about the 1981 session. He notes that, while most bands used their time at the BBC to bang out quick, mostly live renditions, the nascent Pulp instead eagerly used their time to finally indulge in all sorts of engineering and arrangement whims. This of course drove the session’s producer, former Mott the Hoople drummer Dale Griffin, around the bend.
So, although Jarvis dismisses “Refuse to be Blind” as “a blatant Joy Division rip-off,” there’s not much of Martin Hannett’s famed and eerie use of space and echo here. Instead, the production is fairly busy, with relentlessly squiggling synths and a vocoder-like processing effect on Jarvis’ voice as he sings the title at the end. The latter led to my favorite detail from the sessions, when the band’s “very strange” driver exclaimed upon hearing this section, “I am a fucking Dalek!”
The song itself is a good slice of energetic, doomy post-punk, but it lacks any real distinction. The lyrics imply a lot, but they’re most enigmatic and feel incomplete.
Music From a Bachelor's Den 