I think much like another song “Anti-Matter” (that's also on the same album as this song), this one is also is inspired by a horrifying van crash the band experienced on Nov 3, 2022. This, much like the other track, sounds like it's an extension what they shared while huddled in the wreckage, as they helped frontman Garrett Russell stem the bleeding from his head wound while he was under the temporary effects of a concussion. The track speaks of where the mind goes at the most desperate & desolate of times, when it just about slips away to all but disconnect itself, and the aftermath.
Oh that summer with you
I clearly remember
We swimming off the Serbian coast
And you reread and you reread hard times
After the way it ended
I was bloody and bruised
I needed to find out why you cut me off
And left me for dead in Javeria
Hard times
So I lost a year
On that shaky pier
To find an answer
I searched every sentence
And ended deeper still
In hard times
I clearly remember
We swimming off the Serbian coast
And you reread and you reread hard times
After the way it ended
I was bloody and bruised
I needed to find out why you cut me off
And left me for dead in Javeria
Hard times
So I lost a year
On that shaky pier
To find an answer
I searched every sentence
And ended deeper still
In hard times
Lyrics submitted by skellybelly
Hard Times Lyrics as written by John Vanderslice
Lyrics © SC PUBLISHING DBA SECRETLY CANADIAN PUB.
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
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The lyric is "And you re-read, and you re-read." As this song is making reference to the novel by Charles Dickens (I have not read said novel.) And so it would seem that the love interest of the protagonist was obsessed with this novel leading up to her leaving without any explanation. In order to understand why his love interest would leave him stranded in this manner he gets a copy of the novel and reads it only to 'end up deeper still, In Hard Times.' Which is a clever double entendre. He spends a year searching every sentence of this novel trying to understand her and then becomes her without realizing. So she too was mourning a loss when they were together and was searching for solace in the novel. At least I would make that assumption. There was not much to get out of the content of the novel, it was a total red hearing that led him on because he thought that the separation was a person a front to him- a stance which I can relate very deeply too.