A better way to navigate my music collection

Solution 1:

Use the Songs view and use the column browser (in the View->Column Browser menu)

then you can choose the artist in one column, iTunes (now Apple Music) then just shows the albums for that one artist in another column (and only the songs from that artist) and from that last column choose the album.

For example:

iTunes on Song view

In iTunes the songs view used to be the main view and I think allowed more control but Music has dumbed things down and you have to use the other views sometimes.