Des, I think I can solve one problem for you, your third one. Select all the songs in the album, right click and select 'get info' and then set 'is compilation' to yes. That should merge that stuff up for you.

As for the album view not looking good without artwork .... I'm sad enough to actually google search for album covers and set the artwork myself! My rack view looks great (even if some albums appear a few times and you see some book covers in with the music!) :)