Can you smell what the Roch is cooking?

That would be a sumptuous turkey dinner with all the fixings, sugar cookies and perhaps a good cigar and a snifter of brandy afterwards - or at least the musical equivalent of same on his new CD, Christmas is Calling.

That's Roch Voisine, by the way, who's back with holiday spirit in spades. For his first local appearance in three and a half years, he performs tomorrow night in the Jubilee Auditorium. If you're not in the Christmas spirit already, this show ought to do it. Roch's been living and breathing Christmas since April.

Like a scene out of Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas, trapped in a land where every day is Christmas, Voisine spent his entire summer - April to September - holed up in a Montreal studio making sure the music came out just right. Unlike the usual horde of hastily recorded carol collections, Christmas is Calling is no knockoff. The singer expended tremendous effort to make it something special, eschewing the usual sleighbells and string sections in favour of more creative arrangements. Not only that, but he actually made two Christmas CDs - one in French (L'Album de Noel), one in English.

Poor weather in the spring helped the mood in the studio, he says - as did Christmas decorations, home-cooked Christmas dinners and regular appearances by Santa Claus. But while most Montrealers were outside enjoying their summer, how long could the illusion last?

"The last month was really hard," Voisine laughs.

But, he adds, making Christmas music when no one else could even imagine it really helped him focus.

Says he, "It helped us rediscover the Christmas tunes for what they are: Great melodies and some of those lyrics are really, really, really beautiful if you don't hide them behind complicated arrangements or cliches. We wanted to take a fresh approach."

If you're wondering where Voisine has been during the past three years, the answer lies in his curiously thick French accent. He's been in France, of course, re-connecting with the audience that made him so big to begin with. After Kissing Rain, the follow-up to his 1993 English language breakthrough, I'll Always Be There, he recorded Chaque feu ("Every Fire") in 1998 and took a hiatus from the English world.

He also had to pick up the pieces after his manager Paul Vincent died in 1997.

The Christmas album and cross-Canada tour are just the things to get reacquainted with English fans, he says.

"I've been in the French world," he explains. "Now I've got to get back into the English vibe."

Voisine promises another English pop record by the end of next year - and no, it won't be another Christmas album. He's probably had his fill.