by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

It seems a bit mad. A band strives and struggles for most of a decade to perfect their sound and live show, assembles a beautifully packaged and brilliantly produced self-titled debut album, gets the CD out on the local and even national radar—and then hits the brakes full force.

Local quartet Gaïa knew what they were doing, though. Their year and change on the road as the house band for Cirque du Soleil’s touring production Delirium was invaluable. “For the first time,” recalls drummer Sacha Daoud, “we were in a context where Gaïa was all there, but we weren’t deciding anything. We were working for an employer, for another vision. It was an experience that transcended us as a band, even as individuals. It brought us a solidity, a discipline, which we can apply to our comeback.”

At around $100 a ticket, you can bet that doing Delirium demanded top-shelf chops from Gaïa. “It’s like military training,” says singer/guitarist Elie Haroun. But that—along with exposure, experience, insight and a couple of side gigs of their own, including a workshop for hard-up kids in the Bronx—was to the band’s benefit.

“One year later,” says Daoud, “we’re still together, still strong—”

“—and smarter for it,” concludes Haroun.

The band, barely back and still readjusting, is nonetheless psyched to celebrate their 10th anniversary, get cracking on new material and re-ignite the hype around Gaïa. A vivid, free-flowing melange of vintage, jazz-inflected funk and myriad Brazilian styles, with touches of pop and rock, their sound demanded a well-versed producer, and one who could match their painstaking perfectionism. Ramachandra Borcar, of Ramasutra/Camping Sauvage/Semprini Records fame, was the guy for the job.

“Being a democratic band,” says Haroun, “to work with us, you have to be a strongly opinionated individual. Because there’s no leader, we decide as a group, and sometimes, because we’re individuals, we don’t agree with each other. His experience and his vision challenged us, and our strong opinions challenged him—so both sides learned. We were like two animals sniffing each other out and saying, okay, we can be together without having to claw each other’s eyes out.”

Borcar’s fine-tuning and flourishes go a long way towards tipping the band out of the world-music category (in which they earned a Juno nomination, mind you) and into the mainstream, but their use of pop, rock and funky business is truly key. “If you mix that world music with just a little something local people are used to,” says Haroun, “they’ll get into it.”

Their lyrics, exclusively in Portuguese the last few years, might hinder them, but Gaïa are sticking to their guns. “Language is a matter of what the song, what the melody, calls for,” says Daoud, while Haroun adds, “There are cultural and social references that can only be understood through that language, and that’s the case here. It’s like the old principle of the joke—if you translate it, its meaning is lost.”

And for this socially and politically opinionated unit (they’re giving free tickets for tonight’s show to local food bank operations, and urge fans to bring canned food to the gig), meaning is something they won’t give up. “Half the lyrics, if not more, speak about social issues,” notes Haroun. “It’s a strong preoccupation of the band—that’s why we did the percussion workshop in the Bronx, for instance. It gave us a chance to put into action the words we sing.”

At le National tonight, Thursday, Dec. 7, 8 p.m., $20.50

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