Smooth jazz fixture Randy Crawford has a wide-open, expansive voice that"s soothing yet not soporific, laced with a jazzy élan and precise phrasing that lends itself to adult contemporary pop as well as the R&B "Street Life," her hit 1976 collaboration with the Crusaders. She"s the female equivalent of Al Jarreau in that neither are jazz singers, but both boast way too much musicality and grown-up reserve to really slug it out in today"s R&B/pop market. Crawford"s vocals are sheer bliss through the pleasing Permanent, though some fault lies in the uneven material. For every soulful, moody cut like the Albert Hammond-penned ballad "I Get a Little Burned" and the insistent title track, there"s a throwaway like "Merry Go Round," which comes across as a Lifetime network anthem and finds Crawford confessing, "Our love is like a merry-go-round / Sometimes it"s up, sometimes its down" with more dignity than such clichés deserve. Just because you can sing the phone book doesn"t mean you should. --Amy Linden