Wye Oak will be in Lawrence this Saturday, headlining for the first time in town at the Granada, 1020 Massachusetts St. Tickets are 5.

For a band who broke out in 2011 as a guitar-centric indie-folk duo, it could have been a crisis for Wye Oak’s Jenn Wasner to have a mental block while songwriting for their fourth album, and it had everything to do with her guitar.

When “Shriek” was released in April, reviews were centered on the drastic new approach that Wasner and Andy Stack took, producing a synthy, dream-pop album that explores existential uncertainty almost in its entirety without guitar. Their last record, “Civilian,” was charged with electric finger-picked ups and downs; this ethereal ’80s-tinged record is powered by Wasner’s newfound inspiration — the bass — and Stack’s synthesizers, momentarily setting aside his percussion sensibilities.

The two recognize the shift in focus of instruments this go-round, but Stack doesn’t see the “drastic” change everyone else keeps bringing up. The same instruments were always there, he says. They just decided to draw out the electronic sound more than ever before.

“There’s been a lot of attention drawn to ‘a guitar band’ and it’s not how Jenn or I ever viewed it exactly,” Stack says. “It’s been more of a song-based band, and guitar is just one of the tools that we used.”

Discussing the reality that “Shriek” would have to be guitar-less wasn’t a conversation that caused anxiety, despite years of Wasner’s role as band guitarist. Stack describes another attempt at an album like “Civilian” as played out, having already exhausted the particular sound their fans fell in love with on the last three albums.

It was either drop the guitar or don’t make an album, he says.

“The conversation was a really jubilant one,” Stack says. “It was like, ‘Oh we’ve cracked it open, we’ve broken the code, we’ve figured out how we can make music that we’re inspired about and that we’re feeling vital about.’ Whether it was a different direction or not, it was the move that we needed to make.”

Another change made was the way in which they recorded the album; Wasner worked in a studio in their hometown of Baltimore, and Stack was in Portland at the time. A remote, but collaborative approach, requiring them to trade files and record separately, forced them to put on producer hats and embrace a set of tools they hadn’t previously realized were at their disposal.

“Having worked out our previous records in a room together as a proper normal band, there were certain cliches to that,” Stack says. “There are certain moods that you automatically go to when you’re doing that. We never had that process this time. There was never any live versions of these songs until well after the album was complete.”

The live element was the biggest hurdle they faced, reproducing a live performance of this multi-layered album just between the two of them.

“And to be performing in a way that feels authentic,” Stack says. “That’s not like hitting the spacebar and letting the song play out while we do karaoke onstage.”

The first time they played live together, Wasner came to Portland to rehearse for five to six days out of Stack’s house, and decided they needed to record the practices because of how horribly it was going. They wanted to track their progress.

“It was so bad we had a hard time getting through the songs without stopping to laugh at ourselves,” he says.

Having played at least 35 shows by now with the new material, Wye Oak will be in Lawrence this Saturday, headlining for the first time here at the Granada, 1020 Massachusetts St. Tickets are $15.

Following the tour, Stack says he might have to get reacquainted with his non-Wye-Oak life before he can even think about the next direction they plan on taking with their music. He recently moved to Marfa, Texas, right before they hit the road, and he will be coming home to all of his possessions still in boxes. Stack will also be getting married within the next year.

“There’s so many things that are not Wye Oak related that are in my peripheral that are taking up my brain waves,” he says. “We broke down a lot of conventions of how we work together when we made this new record so there’s a feeling of uninhibitedness as far as what we can allow ourselves to do on new recordings. So we’ll see.”