“Your dad is loving his band. I think he’s going to quit his job,” said my mom. I laughed. My dad is a professor of economics at a highly respected university. “I’m not joking,” she said.

For as long as I can remember, we’ve had a drum set (rock and roll variety, purchased circa 1960) in my basement. Every so often, my dad would disappear and a rhythmic racket would waft up through the house. A few years ago he started an economics parody band with his co-workers for the department skit night. So far, so nerdy.

But things got weird when he started laying down drum tracks for a band of three grad students. They call themselves S Apostrophe, or, jovially, the Plural Possessive. Apparently they liked his drum work, because he gradually became a full-fledged member of the band. A real, actual band.

All those years of practice in our basement actually made him quite good. It’s almost as though his entire adult life was nothing but an elaborate gestation in preparation for this triumphant return to adolescence. Suddenly the 45-year-old co-workers waving tambourines in our basement were replaced with indie-looking 20-somethings with real guitars and amps, who chatted and drank beers while I paced around upstairs. Every so often I had to stifle a strange urge to scream down the stairs, “Will you kids cut it the hell out?!”

Soon they were playing real gigs in real venues, like the Blind Pig, which has hosted the Smashing Pumpkins and Nirvana, among others. About a month ago, they released their debut CD, I Was Born in the Dollar Store. Recently, they were featured on NPR’s Open Mic.

They say it’s a sad day when a father outlives his son. When a father outcools his son, that’s downright depressing. The album is . . . well, it’s pretty good. When I tell people my dad’s in a band, I think they expect some sort of retro rock. Maybe 70s covers, something like that. But that’s not the sort of music S Apostrophe plays.

Or, for that matter, listens to. I thought I was pretty cool when I discovered the Pixies in high school, until I found all their CDs already neatly filed in my dad’s collection. On their website (www.sapostrophe.com) the band lists their influences as Garrison Keillor, Paul McCartney, Johnnie Walker, Frank Black and Zack Morris. When I played the album for my friends, Spoon and the Shins came up.

The songs on Dollar Store range from rockabilly hand-clapper “Yellow Fever!” to moodier melodies like “Whiskey & Robitussin.” The lyrics display a literary bent in their self-conscious manipulation of language: “When the pretense runs shallow / and the shadows creep cross the floor, / I sit at my window and watch the wind blow / without a metaphor.” But they also let their hair down in non sequiturs held together by unexpected rhymes: “We could ditch purgatory if we wrote our life stories about marzipan and broken glasses fresh-cut lawns recycled plastics car alarms the light fantastic old red barns and new black caskets . . . ”

Ultimately this album is about missed opportunities, failed romances, the way life seems to build you up and let you down. But the upbeat melodies and skewed humor keep it from getting bogged down in its own ruminations.

You can sample S Apostrophe’s music at http://www.myspace.com/sapostrophe. The CD is for sale at their website (www.sapostrophe.com) and in the iTunes Store. I urge you to support the band, especially if my dad does go through with quitting his job. My tuition isn’t paying itself.