Last year was an up-and-down one for Grizzly Bear. The Brooklyn, New York, quartet’s sophomore album, Yellow House, garnered heaps of praise for its ambient melding of folk and electronic music. However, bassist Chris Taylor would like to forget having to cut short a European tour after thieves made off with the band’s gear in Brussels. Though most of the instruments have since been replaced, the bassist is choked about one missing item. “I couldn’t afford a new flute, so I’m borrowing this really shitty flute,” he jokes, on the line from his New York City apartment.

Taylor is eager to move on. “In the wake of the Europe tour, it’s going to be nice to do something that’s not as doomed as the last one was.”

Mostly, the members of Grizzly Bear are excited to test out the few songs from Yellow House that they haven’t already played live.

“We’re still working on trying to re-create songs from the album,” Taylor says. “Although it sounds like it should be easy, some of the songs were written for the recording and never to be played live.”

“Easier”, the album’s opening track, could prove difficult to play with the group’s bass, guitar, and drums format. The tune’s plucked acoustic guitars and brushed drumming are doable, but the multiple glockenspiels and electronic flourishes are trickier to pull off. Another addition to Grizzly Bear’s live show is “Marla”, a number inspired by singer-guitarist Ed Droste’s family history.

“His great-aunt wrote the song,” Taylor explains. “She was a songwriter in, I think, the ’20s.”

After hearing the cabaret tune, the foursome wrote its own interpretation of the piece, slowing it down drastically into a haunting waltz laced with eerie piano chords and a string arrangement composed by indie-violinist Owen Pallett (aka Final Fantasy).

Although Grizzly Bear recorded most of the album in an actual yellow house in Cape Cod, the bizarre touches of atmosphere on “Marla” were captured in Taylor’s grandmother’s basement. The noises from old radios and water pipes add character that the soundsmith feels can’t be found in a regular recording studio.

“I know it sounds cheesy, but those little sounds are in here as textural moments, albeit percussive or atonal, excavating a living and breathing environment,” Taylor says. “Studios don’t have that.”

Grizzly Bear plays the Plaza Club on Saturday (February 17).