I'm not very graphical either, but I'm thinking something like pank has shown, but where he has the Artist filed above, show it like you now show the library browser. In other words, instead of a simple list, the list would show the album art and statistics just like the library browser does now.
Where he shows the album, use what alex has and show all the albums thumbnailed. I'm not sure how that would work with other viewschemes, with other fields, like file type, or rating or whatever; maybe fields that won't allow thumbs easily can stay as they are, a simple list.
Either way, as you drill down, the bottem view (pane) should show the thumbs large with a list, as pank has shown.
Does that make any sense? If not, I'll try to paste something together.
In the meantime, why did you remove the a-z selection on the library browser? I used it all the time. I have 1700 artists, 1000 albums and 40 genres. It takes a while to scroll down with so many. Can it be put back until this is decided, please?