“Familiar faces around me, laughter fills the air,” Bruce Springsteen sings at one point on “The Rising,” his first full-length studio album with the E Street Band since “Born in the USA.”

As tempting as it might be to consider the line solely in the context of this highly anticipated reunion album, “The Rising” is more pensive than jubilant. Many of the songs were written in reaction to the tragedies of Sept. 11, which Springsteen uses as a touchstone for the kind of human-scale character studies that mark his best work.

However, “The Rising” doesn’t immediately assert itself as a classic Springsteen-E Street collaboration. Clarence Clemons’ booming tenor sax rarely pokes through the wall of guitars and voices. Steven Van Zandt’s idiosyncratic vocals are melded into glossy, faceless harmonies.

“If there’s a light up ahead, well brother I don’t know,” Springsteen admits in “Further On (Up the Road),” one of a few songs that return to the familiar guitar-piano-and-drums rock that had been E Street territory from “Darkness on the Edge of Town” through “Born in the USA.”

Instead, these 15 songs push Springsteen and his band mates into new landscapes at the hands of Atlanta-based producer Brendan O’Brien, who has worked with Korn, Pearl Jam and Rage Against the Machine.

Haunting Islamic songs and traditional instruments open the tensely melodic “Worlds Apart,” which examines the notion of an ill-fated cross-cultural romance. The chiming electric guitars and tape-looped rhythms of “The Fuse” sound more like the Cult than a band with roots on the Jersey Shore.

At times, the updated sound buries the band under too many layers, such as the overwhelming strings and backing chorus on the opening “Lonesome Day.” At other times, the darker songs border on ponderous, especially for a band capable of such unbridled energy.

Lyrically, Springsteen dwells on the aftermath of sacrifice and loss with the thoughtful touch he once used to capture a younger man’s dreams and longing.

The impression of a missing body in the bed sheets is an evocative image that opens the blues-tinged ballad “Empty Sky.” The hollow reaction of a surviving hero is conveyed through tiny details in “Nothing Man.”

A family left behind tries to cope in “You’re Missing,” which extracts a thread of optimism in the delicate Hammond B-3 organ solo that concludes the song.

If there’s a fault to Springsteen’s gracefully executed material, it’s the fact that he doesn’t use the band enough to convey the sense of healing that one might hope for from one of rock’s most enduring collection of musical pals.

“The Rising” approaches that potential on the anthemic title track, the gospelly “My City of Ruins” and “Mary’s Place,” in which Springsteen sings about meeting friends at a favorite haunt to consider carrying on without a lost lover.

“Your favorite record’s on the turntable,” he sings. “I drop the needle and pray.”

Salvation through music is a familiar Springsteen theme. In its best moments, “The Rising” makes you believe that it’s still possible.