If it weren't for the fact that the CDDB is so notoriously bad about having the year field filled out at all, I would suggest that sorting albums by year should be the default behavior.

For those who (like me) religiously fill out the year tag and correct all of the other egregious errors in the CDDB tagging, there are two ways to work around this limitaiton if you're willing to do it (I know this is the Wish List thread)...

You could create playlists and have the albums ordered chronologically in the playlist. Hmm, does the Central do hierarchical playlists like the car player? Probably not, I'm guessing...

Okay, then the other way is to add the year to the beginning of the album name. Not particularly pretty, but there you go.