If Chad Van Gaalen took Valium and adopted a Morrissey-like manner of singing, he might end up like Markland Starkie and make himself a number of friends in the indie music scene (like Simon Taylor-Davis of the Klaxons and Ed Droste of Grizzly Bear). In putting together his second album as Sleeping States, Starkie set some rules to set himself apart from the singer-songwriter crowd, like “don’t have strummed guitars” and “only use simple instrumentation.” The resulting album, There The Open Spaces, is a 12-song collection of lo-fi home recordings featuring droning, stream-of-consciousness lyrics augmented by the occasional electronic blip or ambient effect. The progressively multi-layered a cappella “Rain Check” is a fine opener for the album, but the music quickly becomes soft-focus and dreamlike, with one song blurring into another. Even the shorter pieces, like the 55-second “The Times I have Fallen for You,” feel longer than their actual running time. It’s not necessarily sleep-inducing, but it could be a nice complement to lying on the couch with your eyes closed and the lights turned down low.