Monteagle is the solo project of Tennessee-born, New York-based singer/songwriter Justin Giles Wilcox, whose textural Americana first gained traction during his tenure as head writer for the similarly minded duo Nassau. Named after a mountain in Southern Tennessee, Monteagle's hazy epistles follow in the footsteps of roots-loving sonic explorers like M. Ward and Lord Huron, pairing a well-worn rustic drifter aesthetic with washes of experimental ambience. His solo debut, Midnight Noon, comes courtesy of Brooklyn indie Fire Talk Records, and more or less picks up the thread left by Nassau on their 2017 LP Heron. On standouts like "East LA" and "Master," Wilcox flashes his gifts for melody and creating a tone of melancholic sweetness that gives the songs an appealing, lived-in feel. The nostalgic "Hollow Ground" revisits themes of his Southern past in warm waves of sparse pastoral folk, while the lusher "Motel" deftly captures the dreamlike feeling of late evening on lonesome back roads. Recorded in an old church in upstate New York with a five-piece band, Midnight Noon makes the most of its spaciousness and is imbued with enough atmosphere to terraform a small planet. Wilcox's mumbled vocal delivery is appropriately cracked and dusty and his arsenal of heavily-reverbed guitars and creaky pianos are lonesome and evocative, but stripped of their aural patina, many of the songs feel a little too boney and reliant on their chosen affectations. As a result, the second half drags on a bit, wallowing too deeply in a mire of textured ambience that could benefit from some additional heft and structure. Still, there's a familiar warmth to much of Midnight Noon, that ought to appeal to fans of this tonal branch of indie Americana.