For his previous album „The Price Of Sin“, Markus Rill already earned himself a four-horse review from us. Now the follow-up album „The Things That Count“ is just as good, possibly even a notch better. The „k“ in Markus’s first name helps remind us that he’s from Germany (born in Frankfurt, 1970). Still he stands in a line with artists like Slaid Cleaves, Rod Picott (certainly in regards to his voice), Chris Knight, and Todd Thibaud. Thematically, his songs lean toward the heavy side: Love & betrayal („The blue sky & the highway, they’ve never let me down – unlike you“), homicide & murder („they found the body by the railroad tracks, it was Carlos Escondido), he tells the story of a woman with a secret („sobbing through long and lonely nights over doing what she’s about to do on the sly“), of a little girl who’s abused by an uncle („just don’t tell anyone“) and gets married to a drunkard on her 19th birthday and – in perhaps the album’s finest number – of Sarah Stein, a ballet dancer who escapes from Vienna to the US in the 1930s to live her life „oddly out of place and strangely out of time“ as an „old ballerina on the Dakota County line“.
And yet despite these dark topics, the album never gets bogged down in gloom. The music is just too good fort hat to happen. Every song gets exactly the treatment that it deserves, from the Robert-Cray-like guitar on the album opener to the subtle stylings of the Cavaquinho (Brazilian ukulele-type instrument) on the clsing number – both provided by Joe McMahan.
Beautiful songs, strong lyrics, excellent side musicians, a fine booklet with lyrics – these are the things that count.

René Leverink