I know of two ways to play one specific album in iTunes:

• Do a search that's specific enough to include just that album and no other tracks; press a "Play album" button. (Doesn't work in cover flow or list view.)
• Go to list view; turn on column browser; in View/Column Browser, make sure "Albums" is showing; double-click an album name.

These are fine as far as they go, but:

• Double-clicking an album in cover flow will play the album, and then keep going (in alphabetical order). That's no good.
• In playlists like "Purchased" or "Recently Added", you can either view and play whole albums, or sort by date added; you can't do both.
• In general, there's no straightforward way to get from a track in a playlist to the whole album it belongs to.

What I would really, really like, would be to right-click on any song or album cover, anywhere, and choose "Play album".

While I'm waiting for Apple to add that, any tips for simple album-centric listening?