Johnny Mercer’s songs are American treasures—clever, lively and relentlessly well constructed. Banu Gibson treats them as such on her new album, giving them the care and loving treatment they deserve. She and her trio (John Sheridan, Bill Huntington and Jeff Hamilton) embrace the romance of “Moon River” and wring the full measure of loss out of “Autumn Leaves.”

Treating them as classics is a mixed blessing, though. At times, Gibson seems more engaged with her love of the material than the sentiments they express, which makes the more lighthearted songs frustrating. “Goody Goody,” for example, celebrates a jilting lover getting his comeuppance, but she sings it as it’s often sung—theatrical and unavoidably cutesy because of the title phrase. And Gibson clearly has affection for those songs, including “I’m an Old Cowhand,” “You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby” and “Strip Polka” on the set.

Those songs suffer from a lack of imagination, though—not a lack of execution or passion for Mercer, and they’re not indicative of the whole album. The autumnal closing suite of songs are heartfelt and beautiful, and the band swings throughout, most impressively when it switches from waltz time to swing on “While We Danced at the Mardi Gras.”