And now for something completely familiar. It’s been 20 years since Monty Python’s last movie, “The Meaning of Life,” and ex-Python Eric Idle hasn’t modified his comedic style one whit. Python fans will recognize the “Rutle” in Rutland; Idle was responsible for a short-lived TV series called “Rutland Weekend Television” in the ’60s and also “The Rutles,” perhaps the first spoof music documentary. On his new CD, Idle revisits Rutland to mock travelogues by “documentary makers in brown shorts.”

Like most of Idle’s solo work, this disc has its share of hits and misses. His witticisms, puns, one-liners and drawn-out sketches keep the disc moving along, although it takes a few minutes for the real laughs to kick in. When they do, they may well have you doubling over.

The Rutland Isles are filled with paranoid natives who keep saying, “Look out behind you!” as well as randy Frenchmen, randy scientists, randy soldiers, randy fauna and … well, you get the picture. It can get a little awkward listening to 60-year-old Idle’s seventh-grade bathroom humor and graphic sex jokes. (Think Woody Allen.) But the classic Python-style bits are sure to please fans who have longed for new Idle material for years.

“Eric Idle Presents the Rutland Isles” is out now on iMusic.

David Gray
“A New Day at Midnight”
Out now on RCA Records

Nine years after the release of his first album, David Gray has finally come into his own as a bona fide pop star — kind of. Though he is still barely known in the United States, Gray is a celebrity in Britain, and unlike that of so many other British pop musicians, his fame is well-deserved.

Gray’s latest release, “A New Day at Midnight,” is a work of exceptional songwriting, performance and production. His compositions are infused with depths of soul and peaks of maturity not usually found in such a young pop musician. Gray gave glimpses of his composing talent on earlier releases, but on this album he shows a more developed, refined ability and assembles 12 consistently high-quality tunes. No single track stands out like “Babylon” did on 1999′s “White Ladder,” but each song is vibrant and powerful.

The production values have taken a big step up from “White Ladder,” and — like folk-rocker Billy Bragg’s past two high-production CDs — the sound on “New Day” is polished but not at all too slick. Gray uses the same instrumentation as on his last album, mixing folky acoustic melodies with synthesized techno rhythms. It is a potentially ruinous combination when leaning too heavily in one direction or the other, but Gray pulls it off brilliantly.

Glenn Gould
“A State of Wonder: The Complete Goldberg Variations”
Out now on Sony Classical/Legacy

That Glenn Gould was both a child prodigy and a musical genius no one disputes. His brilliance was manifest as early as age 3, at which point he read music and demonstrated absolute pitch. To reach the top echelons of classical music, one pretty much has to be a child prodigy, it seems. The classical bins at your local record store are filled with them: Emanuel Ax, Joshua Bell, Itzhak Perlman, Midori, etc. Yet few have been able to achieve the rock-star status Glenn Gould knew from the start of his career to its finish.