To be blunt, you don't know what you are talking about.
First, mpd is neither heavy nor sluggish. Nor, for that matter, is mmpc, though it's a bit of an awkward interface. Neither of them has eye candy at all.
Second, you have made no posts asking for help installing mpd and getting it to work, so I know you haven't tried it. (It really is fairly challenging to hunt down a correct version, and get config files configured right; I feel it's worth it though, and it's always easier the second time around.)

Of those players, I've only tried Kagu, mpd/mmpc/mpc/some scripts with netcat, and (as of yesterday) mediabox. I've not enough experience with Mediabox to say anything about it. Kagu is along the definition of decent you're thinking of; workable, but not for me. mpd &c. are diametrically opposed (and, I find, very pleasant) so please don't generalize from whichever ones you have used and assume the whole list must be like that.