There are no high-end health clubs in White Center; a "workout," for most around here, is running around trying to make the rent.

The Gap doesn't live here, and things are so tough, even the Salvation Army clothing store has closed.

This is the kind of struggling, lower-middle class America that doesn't get much publicity (unless there's a murder), and the kind of place that inspires Damien Jurado. You won't find him hanging around the hip places in Belltown or Capitol Hill, or writing songs about the Seattle most people know.

"When I'm dead and have piles of records left behind," he suddenly blurts out, "I hope I'm remembered as someone who gave voice to the forgotten America."

Jurado's stark, quietly desperate songs tend to be set in small, "nowhere" towns, "the surroundings are grim or desolate . . . not the stuff you see on TV, the glitz and glam of Hollywood." Like, say, White Center. "On My Way To Absence," Jurado's sixth and latest album, begins with a song Jurado wrote while living there:

Turn off your headlights

Here come the cop cars

Music for the bad boys

Music for the good boys

Here in White Center

At the Salvadorean Bakery and Restaurant on Roxbury Street near 16th Avenue, Jurado polished off rice and beans with a can of soft drink, and then got down to talking. He lived in White Center for a few years before moving north to Shoreline. ("I think the schools are better there," says the father of one.)

"There's a lot of anger in this album, but at the same time, I'm embracing the soul of America," Jurado says, fidgeting with restless energy in a booth. "Maybe it's boredom. I've lived in these small towns, dude — it's [expletive] boring."

Linebacker big, Jurado can roar like a lion at the sub-mediocrity of the contemporary music world, or he can whimper like an injured puppy about his experience with a tumultuous, three-album stretch with Sub Pop. His first album for the Seattle label was, he says, very nearly his last: "During 'Rehearsals for Departure,' I had a nervous breakdown — I'm still not the same. I became fragile, emotionally and mentally."

What drove him over the edge, he says, was Sub Pop's insistence that "everything had to be so perfect." By comparison, he picks up a copy of his new CD and says, "You can hear chair squeaks, a guitar flub ... " He says he spent two hours recording his voice and guitar parts, then spent a few months crafting the music with producer Eric Fisher.

Musically, this album is quite a bit more adventurous — even playful — than his early, stripped-down work. The song "Big Decision" even features samples and loops over a meditative chant — electro-folk, anyone?

The song "Fuel" is more old-school Jurado, just the singer and an acoustic guitar for a disturbing song that ends, "mother burn my body for fuel." On the Rosie Thomas duet "Lottery," Jurado's writing is macabre:

I hope the mourners will bring plastic flowers

They'll drink to your death with pink champagne

Jurado insists none of the songs are about him, and that he feels detached from them. He's a mixture of rage and optimism. Much of the time, it sounds as if he has no plans for his music, no scheme, like it's all random; and then there are some crystalline moments where he is perhaps understanding himself for the first time.

He can be as bitter as day-old coffee, and just as strong. Jurado loves to complain and has a chip on his shoulder the size of Mount Rainier, and maybe that's what drives him. Perhaps that's why instead of a contented truck driver, he is a restless writer.

Released in April by Secretly Canadian (www.secretlycanadian.com/damienjurado/), "On My Way To Absence" has sold some 18,000 units, better by half than his last album, which sold around 12,000; his Sub Pop releases never did nearly that well, so it's clear that he is enjoying steady, even dramatic growth. Yet does that make him happy? Not really.

"I'm more of a name you recognize," is his latest grumble. "A lot more people have heard of me than buy my records."

While many, many Seattle musicians would love to have the name recognition that Jurado is accumulating (Entertainment Weekly recently dubbed him "Seattle's musical Steinbeck," others have compared him to fellow Northwesterner Raymond Carver), that isn't enough for Jurado; he is perpetually in conflict, at times perhaps with himself. Jurado's Web site (www.damienjurado.com) calls him "an urban folk singer," and the 32-year-old singer-writer seems to be struggling with the "who am I?" concept at this point in his career.

"I'm in this constant — it's frustrating for me, but since I've been doing this music, I'm either too-folk or I-don't-know-what for the indie people, the Modest Mouse and Bright Eyes fans — and I'm too 'dirty' or whatever for the John Hiatt and Aimee Mann fans. It's frustrating, I don't know which way to go.

"My mom keeps telling me I should just be myself."

As mothers often are, she may be right.

• Very good news: William Goldsmith, the human drum machine from Sunny Day Real Estate and its offshoot, the Fire Theft, has joined Kento Oiwa and Michiko Swiggs in IQU. According to IQU ("ee-koo") publicist Frank Nieto, Goldsmith has joined the band by recording with Oiwa and Swiggs. Goldsmith had been playing with the electro-rock band on occasion, and the results were extraordinary, as he adds a layer of lean muscle to the experimental band.

• The Bremerton punk band MxPx has a new album, "Panic," just in time for the Vans Warped Tour. Blink-182's Mark Hoppus is featured on the song "Wrecking Hotel Rooms."

Tom Scanlon: tscanlon@seattletimes.com