LOW-KEY LOCAL SWOON: BIRTHING HIPS, KAL MARKS, MORE PLAY MIDDLE EAST UPSTAIRS

Look, we don’t mean to start the year off bragging, because our resolutions list said we should be nicer, but this is Boston, alt-weeklies are blunt, and you don’t have time to waste. Facts are facts.

With each passing month, our local music community grows, new bands arise, and lineups form that somehow consist of multiple, if not entirely, headline-level acts. At first, catching a booking of that level felt like luck. Now? That’s considered normal in a city as rich with talent as ours.

Case in point: the concert going down at the Middle East Upstairs on Jan 18. In a single night, concertgoers get to hear the delightfully dissonant absurdities of Birthing Hips, the cynical honesty of Brittle Brian, the glittery pop punk of Fern Mayo, the Powerpuff indie pop of Human People, and the futile hopelessness of Kal Marks reshaped into acoustics via a solo set. It’s a dash of Massachusetts madness built to make your knees knock and your heart swell. The thought alone has us mimicking those moves.

So what’re we getting at? Well, it’s nights like this Middle East Upstairs show where you turn to Bostonians who uprooted and left for New York City, bare a toothy grin, and taunt them for leaving a city with a music scene this dang stacked.

BIRTHING HIPS, BRITTLE BRIAN, FERN MAYO, HUMAN PEOPLE, KAL MARKS (SOLO). WED 1.18. MIDDLE EAST UPSTAIRS, 472 MASS. AVE., CAMBRIDGE. 7PM/18+/$10. MIDEASTOFFERS.COM