Making cyrious music since 2018
“Songs to Sing Before We’re Dead is not a record filled with gloom and doom. The material pops with life and dances across the graveyard. These are songs to sing because we’re alive. Eric Cyr-penned titles like “Cemetery Stone,” “Morose Joy,” and “Ideology/Casualty” may sound grim on the surface but each holds a nugget of hope or life lesson. That’s good songwriting.
‘Bones,’ the opening track and lead single, sets the tone. Inspired by an Old Testament tale, the song rumbles and clatters like a souped-up hearse with Hank Williams behind the wheel.” -Mark Nicklawske for 103.3 The North
Cyr and the Cosmonauts began with the core duo of Eric Cyr (guitar, vocals, songwriter) and his sister Rachel Cyr (vocals). The duo has performed in Duluth, MN and the surrounding area since 2014, and in 2018 Eric won the Beaner’s Central singer/songwriter contest.
Cyr and the Cosmonauts consists of Eric and Rachel with Brady Kamphenkel on drums and John McLoughlin on keys. The quartet performs eclectic Americana music with tight vocal harmonies, explosive dynamics, space to breathe and space to blast. Their eccentric, original songs feature probing lyrics and search for the cosmos hidden in the chaos.
In 2018, Cyr recorded their debut album Callused at Sacred Heart Studio in Duluth, MN with Peter Brown on keys, Keith Yanes on bass, and Sten Duginski on drums. The album was recorded and mixed by Tom Fabjance (Trampled by Turtles, Low, Big Top Chautauqua) and mastered by Huntley Miller (Bon Iver, Sylvan Esso, Ben Howard). Callused was released on November 16, 2018.
Callused weaves together a story that is at the same time personal and universal while musing on the mundane, the beautiful, and the places where the two meet. It is a catalog of ten songs that have grown out of Eric's life and experience in the last ten years, songs that he hopes can resonate with truth and beauty within each listener.
In 2021, Cyr and the Cosmonauts released their follow-up album Songs to Sing Before We’re Dead, an album rooted in Americana but as eclectic as your old man’s record collection. Songs to Sing Before We’re Dead delivers songs to live to, love to, die and resurrect to.