I think you'd enjoy a different type of view scheme. Browsing by Artist would seem to make sense. Look in the left hand navigation pane Audio > Artists . This will show you Artists with thumbnails, then when you double click an Artist, it will show you all of their Albums. Double click an album and you'll see all of the tracks. It's a nice system.
You might also like Panes. (left navigation > Audio > Panes). This way you can easily scroll the lists at the top for artist, album, etc. Down below you'll see (by default) Albums with a thumbnail and a list of all of their tracks. Don't like that? Switch the Panes view to an "album thumbnails style, and you'll see one thumbnail per album, and no album tracks.
There are other ways you could do this too. It's all about how you think about your music collection. How you want to browse, sort, and search. The workarounds you've mentioned so far are sort of hacks. They work, but they aren't all that elegant. There are other ways to skin this cat.
If the options I've outlined aren't what you want, please describe the type of browsing (or searching or sorting) experience you are after, and maybe we can help you find a great solution.
Brian.