DVDs are stacking up like cord wood here, and a couple merit attention. I recently wrote about the Robyn Hitchcock retrospective and how, when it comes down to it, I really don’t get him. Because I loved the Soft Boys, I’ll always give Hitchcock releases a chance, and there’s a new DVD from A&E Home Entertainment, Sex, Food Death… and Insects that puts his oddness in a slightly different light. Or, more accurately, it puts his oddness in a very normal light, as he seems like a very normal person who sings surreal songs. Seeing him interacting with bandmates Peter Buck, Bill Rieflin and Scott McCaughey, along with John Paul Jones heightens his regular guy qualities, which in turn makes the songs even more inexplicable. Gillian Welch and David Rawlings are present to represent the Hitchcock cult – which I still can’t join – but everything here makes him seem quite amiable, and you’re left with the impression that his songs may be elliptical for you, but he hears a logic as clear and direct as “Be My Baby.”

About a Son, Michael Azerrad and A.J. Schnack’s documentary on Kurt Cobain is also out on DVD, and it has a dreamy quality, with visuals that present the world he grew up in, a buzzing soundtrack, and Cobain’s voice talking about his life. Then again, I might think of it as dreamy because I fell into a light sleep while watching it on a plane. Unlike Hitchcock, you do feel like you know Cobain by the end of it, or at least you know him better. Cobain’s voice comes from a series of interviews Azerrad conducted as research for his book, Come as You Are, and Cobain seems to talk frankly with him about family, Courtney, his image, drugs and suicide, all with lovely, visually evocative footage of Aberdeen, Olympia and Seattle, and all of which he’d likely have found awfully precious.

We also received Jared Arsenement’s Paradise Faded: The Fight for Louisiana, a documentary on the importance of Louisiana’s coastal wetlands. The cause is important, the craft is sound, but the treatment is as earnest as a tax code. People should know about the wetlands, and hopefully a network will pick it up. In the meantime, you can get it and more information here.