They made Boston laugh first
If you buy a comedy CD this year, chances are good it will come from Comedy Central Records. In the past two months alone, the label has released three new albums, two of them recorded in Boston.
Todd Barry recorded his latest disc, "From Heaven," in Cambridge at the Comedy Studio, an intimate room frequented by open-minded fans, which proves a good fit for Barry's understated sarcasm. There is stand-out material on almost every track, taking on anti-Southern prejudice, Gawker, and Springsteen. And he takes a self-deprecating shot at the Hong Kong, which houses the comedy venue ("I can sell out virtually any Chinese restaurant").
Where Barry's disc is a comfortable conversation, Robert Kelly's "Just the Tip" is more like a homecoming rally. The Medford native's aggressive, sometimes cheerfully vulgar act found a vocal crowd at the Comedy Connection last year. Kelly revels in his addictions to sex and food (he admits food seems to be winning these days). He gets the full Comedy Central double-disc treatment, with a DVD that includes his half-hour special and a documentary of his first time headlining the Connection in 2006.
Boston audiences might be more familiar with Dov Davidoff from the Mark Wahlberg vehicle "Invincible" than from his stand-up, but his new CD, "The Point Is...," is worth checking out. There's an off-kilter musicality to Davidoff's straining, cracking voice, perpetually on the verge of exploding. Sometimes gritty, sometimes childlike, he's engagingly random, bouncing from ideas like shopping at 
