Is there a way to make $stricmp work with multiple values? Here's my album list string:

CODE
$if($stricmp($left(%<album artist>%,4),'the '),$substr(%<album artist>%,5,$len(%<album artist>%))', The',%<album artist>%)
|
[-%albumtype%-|]$if($and(%date%,%album%),'('%date%')' %album%,[%album%])|[%disc%.][$num(%tracknumber%,2). ][%title%]


While this works, it seems to totally ignore the renaming code that gets rid of the "the"s, which is annoying. Is there another way to get this effect?