So, I downloaded Maritime’s new “We, the Vehicles” CD from iTunes last night. Tina needed something to listen to on her trip to Long Beach, CA, over on the left side of the continent. Maritime, if you’ve never heard of them, are the newish band featuring Davey von Bohlen of the late, great Promise Ring. I admit it, I was among the Promise Ring’s legion of fans in the mid-to-late 1990’s — I make no apologies for loving their music. I even liked their “mature” final record, “Wood/Water,” which was unfairly bashed by fans of their more accessible pop and emo songs.

But seriously, how were they supposed to follow up “Very Emergency?” That was (in my estimation), the best pop record of the late 1990’s, having more in common with Velocity Girl’s masterpiece “Simpatico” than the emo movement the band helped start. The three-pronged pop assault of “Happiness is all the Rage,” “Emergency Emergency” and “Deep South” that opened up the record has yet to be topped. Yes, there have been better albums (The Arcade Fire’s “Funeral” springs to mind), but the beautiful simplicity and feeling in “Very Emergency” has few rivals.

Maritime’s first record played a lot like “Wood/Water” part two — it was okay, maybe a bit more upbeat than the final TPR record, but it lacked something essential that kept me from getting into it. However, the same cannot be said of “We, the Vehicles” — it’s full of tremendous (and sometimes subtle) hooks, great lyrics, and most importantly, great songs. The line “We are powerful despite our injuries” in the opening track “Calm” pretty much describes my life right now. It makes me realize just why I loved Davey’s songs so much ten years ago, and how he still remains a great (and underappreciated) writer of pop songs. There’s something comforting about his voice — so imperfect by today’s glossy overproduced standards, so normal and honest and casual. He’s one of us, singing songs about regular life, our failures and triumphs and everything in between.

This is what first drew me to indie rock back in 1993, and it’s why I continue to follow great bands like Maritime, albeith less obsessively than when I was 20. It’s a relief to hear from him again, to know that he’s still out there making great music.

So, my hair is really gray now. This is not necessarily a recent development, but it’s a development I spend a lot of time ignoring, only to come to the sudden realization that it’s happening.

I think a lot about aging — in fact, it’s something that’s always obsessed me. When I was 22, I worried that everything I loved at the time — comics, indie rock, ‘zines, cinema — would end. That some day I’d be old and sitting around lamenting about the loss of everything I’d once held dear. The thing I didn’t understand at the time is that you get new obsessions — if you’re a living, vital person, you always find new things to like. Now that I actually am old, with two children to show for it, I see life as continuous, rather than stopping once you reach a certain age. But some times I do get overtaken by nostalgia.

Oddly enough, it’s often nostalgia for things I didn’t experience the first time — like Pavement, or Sebadoh albums, records I happily ignored in favor of cooler fare, but was still vaguely aware of. Or concepts and media — such as the “indie ethic,” analog home recording, cut-and-paste fanzines — that have faded into a forgotten history that only a small number of us remember, or bother to think about. I look at RestaurantFuel.com and I see a body of writing more massive than anything I ever wrote for the print Restaurant Fuel ‘zine. Yet that duct-tape bound wad of photocopies means so much more to me, seems so much more real, because so many hours were spent assembling it on the couch, and Tina and I actually sold it to real people by mail or face-to-face.

A few weeks ago, I experienced the strong craving to listen to Jenny Toomey’s entire back catalog — Geek, Tsunami, Liquorice, even her later solo records. I spent an hour ripping those records to my iBook, then transferring them over to my iPod. But upon listening to them, I find that they’re (how do I say this delicately?), pretty much shit. Most of her songs are about indie music politics, about the DIY ethic and the pitfalls of micro celebrity. All interesting topics to me back in 1994, but now only interesting in terms of feeling nostalgic for all that indie elitist silliness. Yes kids, we’re going to be mean to you because we like really whiney, self-involved, poorly-produced music. Trust us, though, it sounds much better live (wink wink).

What were we all thinking?

Well, I finally finished “Coyote.” Being a fused set of connected, though separate, short stories, the book was pretty incoherent as a novel in the traditional sense. And although I still found a lot of it to be tedious, the opening and closing sections were pretty good. The twist ending especially was a great payoff — I don’t want to spoil the book for anyone, but it definitely ended well. It wasn’t a twist in the “Twilight Zone” sense, but it was definitely a nice surprise, and served as a nice counterpoint to the first chapter — clearly Alan Steele intends “Coyote” as a libertarian parable, and so that readers wouldn’t confuse “libertarian” with “liberal,” he shows that his philosphy isn’t simply the antithesis of hard right conservatism, but hard left communism as well. “Coyote” doesn’t exactly do for libertarianism what “His Dark Materials” does for atheism, but the potential was there. Perhaps its sequels do a better job.

Besides the politics, there were also some nice high science fiction concepts introduced as well. Again, they were a surprise, so I won’t spoil them.

But the book has its failings — the characters were largely flat, and some of the interpersonal conflicts, particularly among the teenagers, lacked credibility. Ultimately, a good science fiction novel rests on three pillars — the plot, the high concept, and the characters. “Coyote” had the high concept, but the plot and characters were largely missing. That made it pretty much a bore, but the good parts were really good.

Next up: Jack McDevitt’s “Polaris,” or Russell Banks’ “The Darling.” Decisions, decisions.