Exactly 330 seconds into "Little Candle," Knifeplay erupts. The eight-minute beauty is the second song on What Is Truth?, the Philadelphia band's aching and strangely assuring third album. For the first five minutes, the band drifts through a gorgeous hum of picked acoustics and chiming electrics, brushed drums and measured vocals. And then, unexpectedly but certainly not inexplicably, the song explodes into a full-on  blast beat, sheets of noise spiraling inside the rhythmic melee.

Through the beautiful but wounded dozen tracks of What Is Truth?, Knifeplay largely transmutes the agony of our experience into sounds that are painterly like a sunset or graceful like a lullaby, as if the Philadelphia six-piece is trying to sweeten the bitterness of reality with the honey of pretty sound. What Is Truth?, then, is a sanctuary, built not only for  being honest about what most people are up against as they simply survive but also for turning towards hope and love, wherever they may find it.

Tj Strohmer wrote What Is Truth? across four years  while navigating consistent depression, of seeing his  surroundings through a filter of gray and considering how it is we all make it from one day to the next, through an entire life. What Is Truth? is almost exactly 80 minutes long, meaning it's the kind of record you would have stuffed onto a CD-R back in the days when Low were still on Kranky, when Red House Painters were still working, when Ida were making a major label pay for their masterpiece. What Is Truth? mirrors  those predecessors and so feels like an offering, a beacon flashing through the dark, an invitation to keep moving forward.