No offense to David Barbe, who did a fine job behind the boards for The Dirty South, but the Drive-By Truckers just happens to be the kind of band that best conveys its loud, messy vision live in concert rather than on record.

Both lyrically and musically, DBT has always been more about process than product. Resolutions and easy answers are more rare in DBT�s world than synthesizers and snazzy suits, so it stands to reason the band would relish the opportunity to wrestle its demons again rather than just let them lie where they fell on the album.

The Dirty South is a tremendously frustrating record, by turns brilliant and inconsistent, home to transcendent moments and tragic misfires alike. Its biggest weakness is that it ends, because you keep expecting the band to go back and fill in all the holes, to make good on a few half-hearted efforts, to fix mistakes and get the whole 70 minute beast purring like a kitten. Like the band�s past albums, it�s such a fully realized whole that the loose threads and failed gambits stick out like the fins on Carl Perkins� Cadillac.

Of course, that�s the problem with art you can hold in your hand or play in your car�it only contains a limited number of possibilities, and it�s inevitably going to get chopped off and forced to stand or fall based on those entirely finite merits.

That said, some of the �performances� forever preserved for posterity on The Dirty South aren�t quite up to snuff, at least when they�re held up against the band�s own ridiculously high standards (even at its most flaccid DBT still smokes 90% of nu-rock pretenders). Fortunately, the Truckers used Friday night�s CD release party at the 40 Watt to crystallize some of the record�s least certain convictions. Perhaps it was telling that the only song off the album left unplayed was its best, Jason Isbell�s devastating �Danko/Manuel.�

The idea of The Dirty South being less a finished document than a work in progress was explored early, as the Truckers launched into the first five songs off the newly-released disc to start the show, a revelatory welcome that saw the band turn �Tornadoes� from spooked to savage, �Puttin� People on the Moon� from despairing to defiant, and the rock �n� roll mythology of �Carl Perkins Cadillac� from flippant and self-satisfied to worshipfully hard-working, earning the right to invoke the likes of Johnny Cash and Elvis rather than just assuming the privilege.

The remainder of the set featured scattered appearances of favored older numbers like �Sink Hole,� �Uncle Frank,� �Zip City,� and Warren Zevon�s �Play it All Night Long,� but the greatest insights continued to be gleaned from The Dirty South. Only �The Sands of Iwo Jima� remained stagnant, the band unable to overcome Patterson Hood�s uncharacteristically leaden, morally prescriptive lyrics.

Thankfully, the piss �n� vinegar Patterson we�ve all grown to love returned in time to turn in ferocious takes on �Boys From Alabama� and �Buford Stick,� Hood�s twin attempts to humanize the much-maligned Redneck Mafia of the Crimson State circa 1975.

While those electrified versions certainly benefited from a little extra live juice, no song got its pulse quick-started more satisfyingly than Mike Cooley�s lit-worthy stock-car set piece �Daddy�s Cup,� which sorely lacked on record the blistering outro DBT delivered during its feverish performance.

In fact, almost all the songs sounded better with a little more instrumental muscle, thanks in no small part to the superlative fretwork of the newly svelte Isbell, who laid down searing slide guitar all night, as well as just-plain-new bassist Shonna Tucker (Isbell�s wife), who somehow matched Hood�s superhuman enthusiasm note for note.

The Drive-By Truckers came to the 40 Watt to celebrate an impressive new CD that nonetheless sounded just a shade less than all the way there. Credit DBT�s tireless resilience and restless pursuit of a deeper, richer truth, because this was the kind of show that threw into brilliant, unblinking relief everything the band had tried to accomplish on the album.

If you could carry around the experience of this concert in your pocket next to the CD, that inanimate 14 dollar object would be a masterpiece that finally mirrored how The Dirty South truly exists in the real world.