When four Californian pre-teens made an album together it was just one of many creative adventures and quickly set aside, but its reputation as naive avant pop has quietly grown. Still friends, the band explain their odd rebirth
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ike an outsider art version of Sugababes, or kids singing over Depeche Mode ringtones, there’s something both familiar and odd about Summer 2000 by X-Cetra. Recorded by four preteens in Y2K California, the album distils sleepovers, crushes and butterfly clips into 11 tracks of bedroom pop and Windows 95 R&B, equal parts carefree and gravely serious.
Only 20 CD-R copies were ever made. But a still-unknown person posted one of them online in 2001, and by 2020 the girls – now women – were astonished to find it being discussed on muso forum Rate Your Music. “Pure creative expression of these preteen best friends who love each other and wanted to make art together, and that’s so beautiful,” says one user there; “Definitely on the poppier side of ‘accidentally avant garde music made by children’,” says another.
US label Numero approached them about properly releasing the album, which came out on vinyl – with matching nail polish – in January and has further grown X-Cetra’s cult following. (The 1975 frontman Matty Healy was spotted picking up a copy in an LA record shop.) Now the band are back together and the subject of a forthcoming documentary. “It’s been amazing to reconnect musically and creatively with these girls – we’ve already made two songs,” says member Jessica Hall.
