Happening is John Cudlip’s first album as Launder, but it’s no stroke of beginner’s luck. Since starting the project in 2018, the Los Angeles songwriter has released a bevy of lo-fi alt-rock singles and an EP, Pink Cloud, before signing with Ghostly in 2019. In those next three pandemic-tainted years, he got sober and tucked 60 demos under his belt, diligently writing while live shows screeched to a halt. Then he and his band—guitarist Nathan Hawelu, bassist Chase Meier, and drummer Bryan De Leon—recorded take after take, commemorating each slight variation with a joke: “It’s happening.” A rapturous love letter to the scuzzy alt-rock of the early ’90s, pays homage to Cudlip’s dream-pop and shoegaze influences. Marrying the angelic, throbbing melt of Slowdive or Beach House with the punchy clarity of the Drop Nineteens, it’s a precise, evocative expansion on the eyes-closed, blown-out atmospheric rock that destroyed countless Gen X eardrums.