How best to get compilations to show as one album?

[OttoKerner]

@coyote

only the Album Artist tag is the same on each track

That is OK.

@coyote

I set the Artist and Album tags to the actual artist and album for each track”.)

Setting a different album title for each track is a no-no.
Then you don’t have one album anymore.

@coyote

am I hearing from you that I also need the Album tag to contain

Precisely.

@coyote

out of curiosity, does the Plex Dance do something that a fresh Add to an empty Library doesn’t?

No, if you create a fresh library, the Plex Dance won’t do anything differently. The Plex Dance is for the cases where you don’t want to create a new library.